UN/UNDP Office in Libya still not reporting on what is happening on the ground. Praises Gaddafi and its development foundation!

While the United Nations Secretary-General has already "fired" Aicha Gaddafi as it Goodwill Ambassador for Libya, the UN and UNDP Office in Libya has still to report this fact in its website.

As you can see here, the UN/UNDP Libya website still praises the "fruitful relationship with Gaddafi's Government".

While on another page it still shows that Gaddafi Development Foundation is still UNDP's and United Nations Observer.

After appeasing North Korea, United Nations in bed with another dictator. Is it Ban Ki-moon or the UN system itself the problem ?

After Matthew Lee of Inner-City-Press discovered last month that United Nations Agencies, and more precisely UNDP in Myanmar was in cohutz with Junta and was closing an eye on millions of dollars being diverted thru a simple exchange machinery, now UN officials are finally admitting it.

After 4 months of operations in Myanmar, and after 308 Million Dollars spent there, OCHA expressed concerns today that: - "Myanmar’s military leaders are pocketing at least one-fifth of the cash earmarked for victims of Cyclone Nargis by requiring international aid agencies to use an expensive system of changing currency".

Holmes, who first denied to inner-City-Press the loss, expressed “serious concern” over missing money after it emerged that as much as 20 per cent of relief funds were being lost through a costly exchange rate mechanism. He said he raised the issue with top junta officials in the capital, Naypyidaw, during his visit this week to assess the effect of relief efforts after the catastrophe, which killed 140,000 in May.

“At the moment, we don’t have a figure for how much money has been lost,” said Dawn Blalock, an official in Mr Holmes’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).

“All the aid agencies that are working within Myanmar operate within the same system. We have to work within the foreign exchange rules and regulations of a sovereign country,” she said.

All the times when UN is caught in doing "wrong" favors to dictators, the excuse is "everyone does it". (do you remember North Korea??)

Foreign currency brought in to Myanmar by aid agencies must first be changed into government-issued foreign exchange certificates (FECs) before it can then be converted into the local currency, kyat.

Officially, one FEC is worth the same as US$1 (Dh3.67). But, in reality, they trade for only about 80 cents of every dollar they represent, meaning conversion costs for the aid agencies run at about 20 per cent – massively higher than in conventional exchange systems.

Meanwhile amids all this scandal, the United Nations has the guts to demand more CASH to assist the more than two million survivors of Nargis, the most devastating cyclone in Myanmar’s recorded history.

Seems that after lying on North Korea's operations, now Ban Ki-moon is finally acknowledging that an unstated amount of money has been changed into kyats to buy supplies and pay the wages of locally hired staff.

The proportion of cash passing through the currency exchange system is expected to increase as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) focuses more heavily on reconstruction efforts and follow an established pattern of acquiring supplies locally to assist economic recovery.

Mr Holmes has estimated that relief work will continue in the affected Irrawaddy Delta region for at least six more months, while recovery and reconstruction efforts will not be completed until April next year.

The missing money also comes at a time when Mr Holmes has been encouraging the UAE and other oil-rich Gulf countries to provide more aid and assistance through Ocha and other such aid systems.

UN aid chiefs have criticised Gulf philanthropists for providing aid on a country-to-country basis, while many Arabian aid-givers express concern over whether agencies like Ocha lose too much relief cash in unnecessary overheads.

2.7 Billion dollars worth of contract awarded without any signed minutes or deliberations

The house of Kemal Dervis is now on fire!!

The unionist leader Dimitri Samaras has now fingerpointed and denounced publicly UNDP, that in the past 28 months has been awarding contracts worth 2.7 billion dollars without SIGNED MINUTES and COLLEGIAL APPROVAL from the Contract Award Committee.

Only days after the CORIMEC scandal erupted, in which UNDP awarded a multi-million contract to a company barred from doing business with United Nations, on January 17th 2008, an urgent meeting took place in which members of ACP discussed on how amd what had happened.

In the meeting, members asked forcefully to Krishan to explain how could CORIMEC contract have been awarded when most of them were under the impression that they had rejected it back in March 2007?

All members in the meeting demanded to see the minutes of the ACP. .....But wait ...what minutes? there were no minutes.......

Krishan Batra explained that he did not kept minutes for the past two and half years, because minutes were a bureaucratic burden and would have complicated the life of many at UNDP HQs.
Therefore he, Krishan Batra, on his own, without asking the legal advice nor the permission of his supervisors, has deliberated and awarded contracts as WAIVERS and DIRECT PROCUREMENTS worth 2.7 billion dollars in total absence of any minutes.

Samaras and two other junior Arabs at PSO raised the issue of minutes and demanded transparency for public funds bestowed to UNDP. Samaras said that: "was not proper and cautious for an organization like UNDP to manage public funds at these levels without any minutes or records of them".

He continued saying that: -"As an Ex Officio member, I always felt that the members could have a different view on any particular case and those views should be clearly reflected so that it will represent all respective positions. "

Now a year after the CORIMEC contract was awarded, all records of who and how that contract was done - were totally deleted. Leaving room for anyone to fingerpoint anyone else, but Krishan Batra.

Samaras and two junior Arabs urged strongly in the meeting that: "UNDP should find a quick way to rectify and move on with an adequate system within a legal framework for good practices purposes.. Issues of accountability are to be factored in..."

Meanwhile many donors are now ralling together against Kemal Dervis. Some are already contemplating to bring the matter of UNDP at various foras inside and outside the UN.

To award 2.7 billion in total absence of any collegial deliberations and signed minutes, is a gross negligence that Kemal Dervis and Ad Melkert should think twice for allowing Krishan Batra and Akiko Yuge to continue to serve as heads of Procurements in UNDP.

At this point the Secretary General should intervene and bring order in the house of Kemal Dervis, and he should initiate immediately an independent investigation into how UNDP has awarded 2.7 billion USD and to whom.