UNDP Officials Said To Hamper Probe Into Counterfeit Cash

UNDP Officials Said To Hamper Probe Into Counterfeit Cash
BY BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the SunJune 7, 2007URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/56061


UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Development Program employees say the agency's higher-ups used intimidation tactics to prevent them from talking to American authorities investigating potentially criminal activities in North Korea, where counterfeit American currency was used to pay foreigners.

Investigators for the U.S. attorney for New York's Southern District have sought to interview at least 22 UNDP officials with possible information about 35 counterfeit $100 bills that had been held in the agency's Pyongyang office for over a decade without informing American authorities.
An associate administrator for the UNDP, Ad Melkert, said yesterday that he has encouraged his employees to "tell what they know." But his legal department has advised the UNDP employees not to cooperate with American authorities unless supervised by U.N. lawyers who might then disclose the testimony to their superiors.

"We have encouraged everyone to cooperate fully and just to tell what they knew — internally in the organization, and externally to those that were inquiring," Mr. Melkert told The New York Sun yesterday during a press conference meant to highlight the new transparency and ethical measures being implemented by the agency.

But a senior legal advisor at the UNDP, Peri Lynne Johnson, had written a letter telling prospective witnesses in the fake currency case to "make yourself available for an interview with the United States authorities within the parameters that we have established with them." Those parameters, she wrote, were "that the interviews will take place in UNDP offices, with a representative from the UNDP legal office and the U.N. legal office present."

A source familiar with the investigation provided one of the letters to the Sun and said U.N. lawyers were obliged to disclose privileged information to the organization. The UNDP's conditions, therefore, meant information that might implicate senior UNDP officials could get back to them and lead to retaliation, which could include employment termination.

A UNDP report to the General Assembly last week disclosed new details in the case, including that the agency had known at least since 1996 that the Nigerian and Indonesian embassies in Pyongyang had received counterfeit payments from North Korean authorities. The UNDP had not reported the false payments until last week.

According to the UNDP report, the agency paid a consultant, Hazen el-Tanbouli, in December 1994 with a $3,500 bank voucher, which Pyongyang's Foreign Trade Bank later converted to cash. Mr. Tanbouli subsequently informed the UNDP that a bank in his homeland, Egypt, had returned the bills to him as counterfeit and had marked them to ensure that they would not be reused. In early 1996, a friend of Mr. Tanbouli, identified by the UNDP as Dr. Yehia Abu Alam, brought the bills to the UNDP's Pyongyang office, where they were put in a safe.

Several of the agency's Pyongyang office managers, according to the UNDP report, "attempted to address the issue for many years without success." Office employees "sought guidance" from headquarters and despite changes in management — including the tenure of a self-proclaimed reformer — a former UNDP administrator, Mark Malloch Brown — the matter remained unresolved.

Mr. Melkert said yesterday that he had only found out last February that the counterfeit bills were in the UNDP Pyongyang safe. Asked yesterday how it was that the current UNDP administrator, Kemal Dervis, had been unaware of the issue, Mr. Melkert said, "That is what we are now trying to find out."