A UN disgrace
January 26, 2009 
Chicago Tribune
Original Source: 
– HYPERLINK https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0126edit2jan26,0,454107.story \t _blank http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0126edit2jan26,0,454107.story 
In the aftermath of the oil-for-food debacle, the – HYPERLINK https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/crime-law-justice/international-law/united-nations-ORCUL000009.topic \o United Nations \t _blank United Nations was shamed into taking action against corruption in its ranks. It created a special task force in 2006 to investigate bid-rigging, bribery and other alleged abuses in the hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts the UN handles every year. 

By all accounts, the unit has been busy—and successful. It has uncovered about $630 million in allegedly tainted contracts. Its work has resulted in a criminal conviction of a UN employee and a contractor, disciplinary actions against 17 other UN employees and the suspension or removal of more than 45 private companies from the contracting process, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

With that record, you might think the UN would beef up this unit, allow it to ferret out corruption and attempt to restore the UN's shattered reputation. Wrong. The UN thinks the UN has had enough scrutiny, thank you.

The task force expired Jan. 1. The world body failed to renew funding for it. That endangers the 175 investigations the task force did not get to complete.
So much for the UN's zeal to clean up its act.

Some UN bureaucrats harrumph that the task force was not intended to be permanent, that it was a stopgap until the UN could find a permanent way to battle fraud and abuse. That one deserves to be enshrined in the UN's Hall of Lame Excuses. 

More to the point is what one UN insider told us: The UN does not like embarrassing stories to come out about fraud and abuse.

The UN has an investigations division in something called the Office of Internal Oversight Services. (How UNish is that name?) But UN leaders apparently are stalling efforts to hire some of the former task force investigators into that division. They're also thwarting efforts to hire Robert Appleton, who was the head of the task force. 

Score two for those who'd rather not worry about an aggressive and independent investigations unit loose in the UN. 

For years, UN leaders napped while https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/arts-culture/saddam-hussein-PEHST000983.topic \o Saddam Hussein \t _blank Saddam Hussein played them for fools, skimming money from the oil-for-food program and paying kickbacks to UN officials and some 4,700 companies worldwide. The U.S. comptroller general told a House committee almost three years ago that the UN had lost hundreds of millions from corrupt practices. Reform has thus far been slow and uneven, Comptroller David Walker said, leaving the UN vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse.

Not much has changed since then. The U.S. and other nations have to push the UN to keep task force investigators working under the direction of Appleton.