While Dervis tries to figure out who's fault was the Corimec scandal - Morrison prepares a speech to defuse media over it

As early as February 2007, the United States Mission to the UN has alerted the UNDP Management about the potential risk of doing business with vendors that could be either in the UN Security Council Terrorist list or those that could have been blacklisted from the UN.

This new email obtained from UNDP Watch (exclusive), shows that at least since February 2007 - UNDP's Bureau of Management discussed the situation and certain actions were proposed.(see email)

The email reveals that UNDP's Assistant Secretary General (ASG) and Director of Bureau of Management, including 4 top other Directors (D2s) of Bureau of Management (James Provenzano, Darshak Shah, Jocelline Bazille-Finley, Jens Wandel and Krishan Batra) were fully aware of the potential risks and the immediate necessity to install internal control mechanisms and firewalls in ATLAS that would not allow such vendors that were barred from doing business with UN to slip-into the porous UNDP procurement system.

To his credit the head of ACP - Krishan Batra, (the one who together with Akiko Yuge approved in April 2007 the CORIMEC contract), is clearly bringing to the attention of the rest of top UNDP officials the necessity to: (a) customize the UNDP vendor list with the new UN information on barred and blacklisted vendors; and (b) inform all UNDP Offices Worldwide.

But as usual in UNDP many things are said but never followed. As a result of failure of Akiko Yuge to follow the advice of Krishan to perform the necessary tasks, three month later UNDP's highest Committee on Procurement (ACP) awarded a contract of 2.3 Million USD to CORIMEC - a blacklisted company with the United Nations Procurement Services.

Here is the email:
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From: Krishan Batra [mailto:krishan.batra at undp.org]
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 8:39 PM
To: 'Akiko Yuge'
Cc: 'James Provenzano'; 'Darshak Shah'; 'Jocelline Bazile-Finley'; jens.wandel; krishan.batra
Subject: POTENTIAL PROCUREMENT RISK: SUPPLIERS ASSOCIATED WITH TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
Importance: High

Dear Akiko:

At the outset, I wish to sincerely thank you for your support during the Annual ACP Meeting on 23 February. I take this opportunity to inform that I forgot to emphasize one of the potential risks during the meeting, which shall be addressed on an urgent basis. As you are aware, Security Council has provided us a list of nearly 3400 companies/individuals who are associated with terrorism and no contract shall be awarded to them. In addition we have been provided a list of 100 blacklisted suppliers. This has been informed to all country offices. To ensure that these vendors are not used, we are trying to set up a database to check but there is potential of error.

To mitigate the risk of using any of the above vendors, there is a need to customize the vendor table in Atlas which should flag if ever any of these vendors is recommended for contracting. Since this is cross function and requires consultation with CBS, OF and OHR, I will appreciate if this matter is discussed in one of the BoM Directors meeting.

Thanks and regards.

Krishan
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Meanwhile sources close to UNDP Watch at 21st floor, confirm that the advisers of Kemal Dervis including Chief of Staff and Spokesman (Morrison) spent all Tuesday to prepare for Wednesday's press-conference of Kemal Dervis on UNDP's 2008 Programme.

Amid compiling together all briefings that came from various Regional Bureaux on their 2008 Programming, the focus of the intense discussions were how to defuse media over CORIMEC and HERFKENS scandals.

People were throwing ideas to each other, in a very tense and loud debate. Some were for Dervis to defuse the media with reading a UNDP version of the two latest scandals, announcing that in both cases UNDP would further investigate. Others, acknowledged that UNDP (a) couldn't escape responsibility on CORIMEC; and (b) should throw the ball on Herfkens, since actually whatever she committed had nothing to do with UNDP, and therefore she should deal with it on her own, paying back the Dutch government the money she received as rental subsidy. But the second group was adamant in Dervis being more explicit about the actions that UNDP "will" undertake against those who allowed CORIMEC scandal to happen in first place.

At the end of the meeting the group agreed that Kemal Dervis should:

1. Try to defuse media by proactively speaking on CORIMEC and HERFKENS cases;
2. Announce a new investigation into the matter (fast one);
3. Announce that as Administrator he (Dervis not mention Melkert), upon final report of investigation, would take immediate disciplinary actions against "anyone" who failed to o their jobs;

For UNDP Staff, if Kemal Dervis wants to show that he is fair, honest, ethical and transparent leader, he has a golden opportunity to act now and not spin yet another lengthy investigation that might ruin further UNDP's already broken reputation.

While UNDP Watch applauds this latest decision of the 21st floor, we would like to caution the public on getting too enthusiastic about Kemal Dervis's promises. He is a man well-known for not keeping promises. Actually UNDP Watch advisors believe that this latest approach is neither a desire to defuse media, nor a transparent approach to the internal corruption, but rather another tactic from Kemal Dervis to delay the process of a US Congressional Investigation under way in Washington on Dervis's role in the UNDP's latest scandals.

Will see.