Corruption at the UN

Corruption in the United Nations? Surely not!

The folks who brought us one of the greatest scandals of all time (the Oil-for-Food program) have figured out a way to avoid future corruption and scandal: eliminate their anti-corruption task force that had been policing the UN since 2006.

And the U.S. General Accounting Office’s estimates determined that Saddam Hussein made about $10 billion off the deal, not $1 billion as the AP story below reports.

The Procurement Task Force spent about three years chasing down about 20 major schemes, totaling about $1 billion in contracts and foreign aid.

From the AP (via Fox News):

… at the beginning of 2009, the United Nations shuttered the agency and diverted its work to the Office of Internal Oversight Services’ permanent investigation division.

Since then, the number of cases opened, pursued or completed has dropped dramatically and the division has let go most former task force investigators, the AP found in an examination of U.N. documents, audits and e-mails, along with dozens of interviews with current and former U.N. officials and diplomats.

Over the past year, not a single significant fraud or corruption case has been completed, compared with an average 150 cases a year investigated by the task force. The permanent investigation division decided not to even pursue about 95 cases left over when the task force ceased operation, while another 80 unfinished cases have languished.

It also stopped probes into contractors and cut qualified staff and other resources — and halted five major corruption investigations documented by the task force in the final days of 2008.

But we shouldn’t be concerned. Why? Because the UN says so.

“The investigations division, I am convinced, is doing a very good job, and is continuing the good work,” U.N. management chief Angela Kane said in late October. She repeated the assertion last week.

Some of the fraud from this year:

— Nothing has come of a task force report completed in December 2008 that found $1 million a day flowing out of a safe in a U.N. project office in Kabul — part of $850 million intended for Afghanistan’s rebuilding and elections between 2002 and 2006. A year later, U.N. managers say the case is still under review.

— Task force staff ran out of time before they could complete two more investigations on Afghanistan. One involved evidence that a U.S. firm padded its charges by $1 million and the other that U.N. staff diverted millions of dollars from Afghan elections, roads, schools and hospitals, according to U.N. documents and officials.

Task force investigators found evidence some of the money went to expand U.N. operations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East without authorization. And they found no documentation to confirm how the Kabul office used tens of millions of dollars meant to promote democratic elections in Afghanistan.

— No action has been taken on a task force finding that about half of $350,000 in U.N. funds intended to launch a radio station for women in Baghdad was used to pay off personal loans, a mortgage, credit card bills and taxes, as well as for cash withdrawals from a bank in Jordan. The task force recommended disciplining a U.N. staff member and referring the case to national prosecutorial authorities. Neither has happened.

— A task force investigation of collusion and bid-rigging involving a transport company in Africa found contracts steered to one company and two of its senior officers. The task force recommended the case be prosecuted; nothing has happened. U.N. managers say the case is under review.

— In another case, task force investigators obtained evidence of major corruption involving more than $200 million in transportation contracts for U.N. peacekeeping throughout Africa. U.N. procurement records show Russian companies held a large proportion — a quarter of about $400 million in U.N. air transportation contracts in 2009. The case has since been dropped.

Now would Obama kindly explain why we are wanting to send .7% of our nation’s GDP to the UN (about $100 billion from the U.S. each year alone)?