UN fraud team wins a year’s reprieve
By Harvey Morris 
January 15 2008 
The Financial Times
Original Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/277f6940-c2f5-11dc-b617-0000779fd2ac.html
The United Nations’ in-house team of white-collar crime-fighters, threatened with closure despite identifying $600m of fraud-tainted UN contracts, has survived to fight another day.
In bargaining over the UN’s budget at the end of last year, the UN General Assembly agreed to extend the mandate of investigators at the Procurement Task Force for another 12 months.
 “I and others in the team are happy to be alive,” said Robert Appleton, the former US federal prosecutor who heads the force, in his first public comments since the closure threat was lifted. He said he headed a dedicated band of international investigators, which still had 300 cases of potential fraud within the UN system on file. 
The budget extension means the team, with fewer than 20 investigators, will have at least another year to pursue the kind of inquiries that last year led to the conviction of Russia’s highest-ranking UN diplomat on money-laundering charges.
The team, set up two years ago in the wake of the scandal over the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq, identified more than 10 cases of significant fraud involving contracts worth $610m. The loss to the UN through corruption was at least $25m.
Some UN members – including Singapore, which cited the force’s alleged high-handed treatment of one of its citizens serving at the UN – balked at renewing the mandate. The US, which has been most active in prosecuting cases that emerged from the inquiries, argued for an extension. The task force survived in last-minute horse-trading in late December on a two-year $4bn budget that funds the UN bureaucracy.
Mr Appleton said that, like all public bureaucracies with large budgets, the UN was a target for fraud. The UN’s large peacekeeping missions around the world were particularly vulnerable. He said half of the investigations involved big multinational corporations alleged to have used fraudulent means to win lucrative UN contracts. 
According to Inga-Britt Ahlenius, who, as UN under-secretary-general for internal oversight, has responsibility for the task force: “The vast majority of people in the UN are very committed and bright people committed to their functions. Unfortunately, there are some bad apples.” She said she planned to strengthen the UN’s investigations function by relocating investigators from peacekeeping missions to three regional centres.