UNDP Waves Poverty Czar's Net Contract Online Then Does Not Answer Questions

By Matthew Russell Lee
February 26, 2008
The Inner City Press 
Original Source: http://www.innercitypress.com/un48herfkens022608.html
UNITED NATIONS, February 26 -- Following the exposure of UN Development Program poverty czar Eveline Herfkens for having improperly taken $7000 a month in rent from the Dutch government, UNDP has spent time and political capital defending her. On-camera, Administrator Kemal Dervis called Herfkens a good person who made a mistake. Since Associate Administrator Ad Melkert has eschewed questions and answers with the press for some time, his defense of Herfkens has been off-camera. http://www.undp.org/for-the-record/index.shtml \l herfkens Online, UNDP on January 9 said it deeply appreciates the leadership and performance of Eveline Herfkens; on http://www.undp.org/for-the-record/index.shtml \l herfkens2 February 25 it said that Press reports continue to circulate that Eveline Herfkens, Executive Coordinator of the Millennium Campaign, was paid $225,000 per year by the UN for part-time work.  
    In fact, Ms. Herfken' signed a http://www.innercitypress.com/herfkens-2002-6.pdf contract in November 2002 for a net annual salary of $134,331. UN system officials receive so-called post adjustments of an additional 61%. Click http://www.innercitypress.com/postadjustment.pdf here for the most recent UN circular on the topic. So net in this context may be misleading. 

Ad Melkert: What next? Post adjustment not shown
 Inner City Press on Tuesday put this and other questions to UNDP, but like Monday's questions, none were answered. We'll have more on this. For now we simply note as we have to UNDP, that Melkert can hardly be viewed as a paragon of transparency when he came out against the minimal public financial disclosure urged by Ban Ki-moon. He was right on one thing -- we ain't seen nothing yet.