Ethics Ruling Raises Issues for U.N. Chief
By Benny Avni
August 21, 2007
New York Sun
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/60980
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N.'s top ethics enforcer ruled Friday that a whistleblower has suffered prima facie retaliation at the hands of his superiors at the U.N. Development Program, but over the weekend, the UNDP said it would look elsewhere for a more favorable ruling.
The tiff presents a major new challenge for Secretary-General Ban, according to several people involved in the matter. Known for his nonconfrontational manner, Mr. Ban must now decide whether to confront the embattled UNDP and its administrator, Kemal Dervis, or risk erosion of one of last year's only major reform achievements — the establishment of an ethics office.
The U.N. ethics office was created at the height of the oil-for-food scandal, apparently as a measure to prevent criticism of lax U.N. management. One of the new office's top priorities was to provide an opportunity for employees to expose wrongdoing without having to fear retaliation from their superiors.
After long deliberations, the ethics office's director, Robert Benson, ruled Friday that there was a prima facie case indicating that such retaliation had occurred against a former UNDP officer, Artjon Shkurtaj. But, as Mr. Benson noted in letters to Mr. Ban and others involved, the development agency has declined to accept Mr. Benson's jurisdiction over its affairs.
I am yet again vindicated, Mr. Shkurtaj told The New York Sun yesterday in a phone conversation from Albania, his homeland. Now Ban Ki-moon has to either rule for the UNDP or for the ethics office. If the ethics office fails, its legitimacy is at stake.
In his August 17 letter, Mr. Benson told Mr. Shkurtaj that, if his office had jurisdiction over the issue, In my view, a prima facie case of retaliation would have been established. Similar letters were sent to Mr. Ban as well as to the UNDP administrator, Mr. Dervis, and two other top U.N. officials.
Mr. Benson added in his letters, however, that the UNDP does not wish to pursue this matter within the parameters of the General Assembly resolution that established the ethics office last year.
The international development agency's budget is funded independently of the United Nations and is run by its own board of directors, which is one of the arguments it cited in rejecting the jurisdiction of the ethics office.
But the UNDP has not created an ethics mechanism that would serve the same function as Mr. Benson's office to protect whistleblowers. The agency also had not initially objected publicly to Mr. Benson's inquiry into the case, raising the issue of jurisdiction only after the ruling in Mr. Shkurtaj's favor.
UNDP is proceeding to arrange a complementary external review of the case involving Mr. Shkurtaj and related issues, a spokeswoman for the agency, Christina LoNigro, told the Sun yesterday. This review would be led by a highly respected individual or team outside the U.N. system, she added. UNDP believes that having multiple processes reviewing related or identical issues would not be the most effective way to achieve closure of this matter.
A 13-year U.N. veteran who last year served as the UNDP's Pyongyang office manager, Mr. Shkurtaj was let go by the agency in March, after exposing various improprieties in its North Korea operation. Mr. Shkurtaj alerted his UNDP superiors to the existence of 35 counterfeit $100 bills in the Pyongyang office safe and to various other practices in violation of the agency's rules, he said, but it led him nowhere. Among the practices Mr. Shkurtaj exposed were payments made in foreign currency in violation of UNDP rules, hiring local workers who also work for the communist government, and the sale of dual use items that might be used in weapons systems.
Only once Mr. Shkurtaj took his information to other U.N. officials, and later to officials at the American U.N. mission — and only after some of stories about his findings appeared in the press — did the UNDP act. Last winter, its board of directors suspended UNDP activities in North Korea and ordered an audit. The audit's initial findings confirmed most of Mr. Shkurtaj's initial allegations.
After Mr. Shkurtaj's UNDP contract was not renewed, key congressional players wrote Mr. Ban, pleading with the secretary-general to reinstate the whistleblower. The case also became a headline grabber in the Netherlands, which is the UNDP's largest fund contributor.
The UNDP's associate director, Ad Melkert, became a top player in the North Korea affair, allegedly making threats against an American U.N. ambassador, Mark Wallace. A failed candidate for prime minister in the Netherlands, Mr. Melkert has come under increasing fire in his homeland in recent weeks, including being forced to answer allegations that Mr. Shkurtaj made on national television.