UNDP Documents show Setronix a supplier to the Quartermaster General of National Arm Forces of Venezuela

The saga of the scanners for Venezuela continue, raising more and more suspicion on the existence of such procurement and the continuing involvement of UNDP in dirty deals with dictators around the world. Now UNDP publish documents which prove that Setronix, the contractor selected from UNDP in a waiver of competitive biding, was and still is a supplier for the quartermaster general for National Arm Forces of Venezuela.

On April 16th UNDP's David Morrison continued with it's version of the Venezuela story. UNDP produced in their For-the-record (blog) two documents from Setronix which were supposed to prove the existence of the scanners.

David Morrison stated that:

Number of scanners: The original number of scanners was 19. During the
lengthy procurement process, however, the price of the scanners went up. Precisely to accommodate this contingency, UNDP Resident Representatives are given limited authority to adjust contracts accordingly. On the scanner contract, after consulting with SENIAT, UNDP reduced the number of scanners to 17, and increased the overall amount of the contract by $5000. Even at the increased price, the L3 Communications scanners were much less expensive than those in rival bids.The procurement was done in two shipments, one for 16 scanners and the other for one scanner. (Click on following two links to view the documents for all 17 scanners: 1, 2).

First of all both these document clearly indicate that Setronix was and is a supplier for the Quartermaster General for National Arm Forces of Venezuela. Instead of proof of arrivals documents are direct indisputable proof of movement/shipment of equipment from one military base to another. Raising direct question of allege use of equipment from "public".

The problem is that both documents produced from UNDP are neither the Certificates of Customs nor the Lending Certificates which, as per UNDP procurement rules, would have been proof of shipment. Both documents are hand created documents which describes the transportation of certain equipment from one city to another city in Venezuela, and nor the dates nor the cities mentioned in the both documents refer to the port of arrival (or airport) of the initial L3 document which UNDP put online.


More important is that the latest document produced from UNDP (2) has been produced on April 3 - 2008, only days after the first story of FOX NEWS, and it contains a different seal of SENIAT on the document. This date is totally different with the statement of Setronix that the equipment arrived in Venezuela in Nov 2007.


But more important is that in the letter to FOX NEWS on April 11, 2008 , Setronix - the UNDP's contractor admits that the 1 unit out of 17 left Miami International airport and arrived at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Venezuela on Nov 11, 2007. (while in the alleged certificate is indicated April 3, 2008). In the same document Setronix indicate that they had received from UNDP - 90% of the contract payment. While none of the documents provided above is prove of existence or of the implementation of the said scanners in any given Venezuelan public Airport, nor they prove that such equipment are for public use by public administration and not the military (as in fact stated in both docs 1, 2)

Based on UNDP internal processes and rules, the above raises important questions:

• So who at UNDP's Venezuela Office cleared this procurement ?
• Who went to the receiving airport or port customs to receive the goods and clear the goods ?
• Who signed on PO and released the 90% of the payments and based on which proof of goods and certificate of good-condition?
• Who cleared this payment at UNDP's HQs Finance Unit and based on which supporting documentation?

How far should member states hear to these lies from a public funded organization, that is so irresponsible that issues payment to a supplier for the Quartermaster General for National Arm Forces of Venezuela, before installation or proof of delivery ?

Where are the pictures of the equipments purchased from UNDP ?

UNDP Procurement: Exceptions Are the Rule

By George Russell

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the U.N.’s anti-poverty flagship, has overridden its own rules requiring competitive bidding for procurement contracts on more than half of the $1.5 billion in goods and services it paid for over the past three years, an investigation by FOX News has determined.

Confidential UNDP procurement documents obtained by FOX show that over the past three years, the development agency has waived competitive bidding procedures for goods and services worth $879 million, roughly 58 percent of the total it disbursed during that time.

The value of the waivers ranged from $259 million, or 50 percent of total purchases in 2005, to a high of $409 million, or two-thirds of the total for 2006, before settling back to $210 million, or 54 percent of the total last year.

The totals are “shocking,” and “scandalous,” according to William Easterly, a former World Bank economist, who is currently a visiting fellow at the left-leaning Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. “There could be some extraordinary circumstances involved, but even those cannot possibly explain why the bulk of UNDP operations are waivers of competition.”

The waiver tallies were compiled by UNDP’s Advisory Committee on Procurement (ACP), which records the actions that four UNDP regional procurement committees take in more than 160 countries, and additionally must approve all waivers of competitive bidding on contracts worth $1 million or more.

In reply to a series of questions by FOX News regarding the awards and waivers, UNDP reported the overall awards in the same amount as shown on the documents obtained by FOX News. But in recording the waivers, UNDP offered a different interpretation..

Arguing that the term “waiver of competitive bidding” covered many circumstances, UNDP replied that true “exceptions to competitive bidding” totaled only $78 million in 2005, $120 million in 2006, and $99 million in 2007 — or just 20 percent of the procurement total.

The remainder of the waivers, UNDP said, were cases where “full competitive bidding” took place, “but where the outcome is less than 3 fully qualified offers.” This happens, UNDP spokesman David Morris said, “for reasons outside of UNDP’s control,” such as lack of attention from suppliers, “or for a number of other reasons.”

Morrison added that “UNDP acknowledges that using the same term to cover these two very different sets of circumstances can lead to confusion.”

That “confusion,” however, is embedded in UNDP’s own internal documents, where the distinction Morrison makes does not exist.

The same UNDP documents also show that by far the largest and most frequent requests for UNDP procurement cash — and their subsequent approvals — come from countries with questionable track records for government honesty and transparency. Among the big winners are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Honduras and Iraq.

The volume of procurement funds requested for the Democratic Republic of Congo alone in 2006 — $264 million — represented 82 percent of that year’s entire UNDP African regional bureau requests. The tallies also record that Congo was the African country with the greatest value of procurement spending approved in each of the three years covered in the documents obtained by FOX. The UNDP documents do not state the actual value of the agency’s Congo funding approvals, and do not break out the amount of that money obtained through waivers of competitive bidding.

To see the UNDP documents, click here (large PDF: Firefox preferred).

In 2005, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ranked 144th on the “corruption perception index” of Transparency International, a private anti-corruption watchdog, while the U.S., by contrast, ranked 17th (and Iceland ranked 1st). In 2006, DRC skidded to 156th place on the index, while the U.S. slumped to 20th. In 2007, DRC fell to 168th place, while the U.S. retained its 20th-place ranking.

To see Transparency International's ratings, click here.

Tallies supplied by UNDP for the top countries in terms of procurement in 2007 were even higher than in the records obtained by FOX News, indicating that the FOX versions did not contain finalized totals for that year. (Approved procurement for 2007, according to UNDP, was $479 million, vs. $386 million in the documents obtained by FOX.) According to the UNDP, Congo received $41 million in 2007, with $5.8 million granted through all varieties of waivers. In this case and others, UNDP maintained, waivers as it now wished to define them would reduce the total by “40% or more.”

According to its own financial rules and regulations, UNDP is supposed to award contracts for goods and services based on the principle of “effective international competition,” carried out “on as wide a geographical basis as practicable and suited to market circumstances.”

Those rules allow for exemptions, or waivers, based on such factors as the existence of monopolies, lack of satisfactory results from a bidding exercise over a “reasonable time period” and “genuine exigency,” meaning pressing need for a product. The widest latitude of all is given outright to UNDP’s chief procurement officer, who can waive competitive bidding when the officer “determines that a formal solicitation will not give satisfactory results.”

UNDP’s procurement procedures became an issue on April 1, when FOX News questioned the agency’s 2007 authorization of 19 airport walk-through body scanners worth $2.3 million, on behalf of the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez.

The scanner purchase was approved without competitive bidding, rather than the “objective, transparent, efficient” exercise claimed by UNDP. The highly respected U.S. defense contractor that manufactured the equipment, L3 Communications, declared that it had only shipped 17 scanners to Venezuela, and these were for the country’s correctional system, not the customs and tax authority cited by UNDP.

Two days later, UNDP posted documents on its website, which FOX News pointed out contained different totals for the scanners, offered two different dates for the same purchase order, and produced a “project document” for the deal that terminated 3 1/2 years before the purchase was made, and never mentioned airports or scanners at all.

Oil-rich Venezuela, with an estimated GDP per capita of $12,800 in 2007, shares one characteristic with many of the biggest beneficiaries of UNDP funding: its low ranking on the Transparency International corruption perceptions index. In 2007, along with four other countries, it ranked 162nd — in the place immediately above the Democratic Republic of Congo.

George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.

UNDP: Advancing Socialism and Communism in the world

United Nations flagship agency - UNDP is working hard to:

Support the Venezuelan Government in reorganizing and realigning its taxation
system with the best socialist model of state and institutions.

UNDP Watch is pblishing today in esclusive the portion of Objectives and targets of the UNDP Venezuela project: Nr.# 58054:

Did Hugo Chavez hand terrorists access to Venezuela's huge state oil earnings?

Terrorism: Did Hugo Chavez hand terrorists access to Venezuela's huge state oil earnings?

A FARC computer captured by Colombian forces shows just that — and it amounts to state support of terror.Colombian officials on Tuesday reported yet another hideous finding from the laptop computer of dead FARC terrorist Raul Reyes, who was blown away in a Colombian military raid last Saturday.

Turns out the FARC had a friend called "Angel" who was none other than Chavez, the oil-rich Venezuelan dictator whose ties to the FARC go back at least 15 years. The new revelations showed that he was using state oil company cash to finance terrorists.

Last December, Chavez, using the pretense of mediating a hostage release with FARC operative Ivan Marquez, secretly organized a diversion of $300 million in Venezuelan state oil earnings to the FARC.The FARC has waged a war of atrocities against Colombia since 1966, killing, maiming and displacing tens of thousands. It rivals al-Qaida in depravity, and its atrocities put it on every internationally recognized list of global terror groups.Colombia's high commissioner for peace, Luis Restrepo, reported that Marquez said Chavez would hand FARC a "stake in oil companies" to funnel $300 million in financial support. "We already have the first 50 million and he has a schedule to complete 200 during the year," Marquez wrote. "The friend suggested working the package through the black market, to avoid problems."

So Chavez didn't just hand them cash in a black bag. More ingeniously, he "offered us a chance of a business in which we will receive a portion of oil to sell abroad, leaving us a juicy profit," the terrorist gushed. "We will receive ($300 million) to create a for-profit company for investments in Venezuela. It's likely that we will get government contracts."

In other words, Chavez was offering the FARC seed capital to ensure that its cash continued permanently — along with its efforts to topple Colombia's democracy. In light of its previously unknown bid to acquire 50 kilograms of enriched uranium for a dirty bomb, and Chavez's growing alliance with Iran, this signals big plans to expand terrorism on a global scale.Chavez's scam is actionable as state sponsorship of terrorism and should be stopped immediately. Taking him to court is one thing, but as evidence piles up, we probably ought to start thinking about taking him out.

The U.S. took out drugged-up Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989 for much less.Chavez's actions are more disturbing because the terror cash ultimately comes from his biggest customer, the U.S. consumer. In his Caracas palace, fuming at President Bush, the dictator must have been pleased to know that cash from unwitting U.S. motorists at Citgo pumps funded not only FARC's bombings and cocaine traffic, but also hostage-taking that included three innocent Americans.

Chavez sells about 1.3 million barrels of oil a day to the U.S., amounting to 60% of Venezuelan state oil company production. At $100 a barrel, that's a $130-million-a-day outlay that U.S. officials ought to rethink.On Tuesday, Bush voiced strong support for Colombia and urged Congress to think about the real choice here: an ally that's just foiled an international terrorist plot to acquire uranium for nuclear bombs or a dictatorship actively seeking to topple the U.S. through its sponsorship of terror.Rarely have we seen terror financing so brazen. Maybe it's time to seriously consider doing without Venezuelan oil as long as Hugo Chavez is in power.

UNDP Headquarters in high IT alert after the exposure of its corrupt activities in Venezueala

After the second story on Fox-News on the corruption with the Venezuelan procurement of scanners, Akiko Yuge - Assistant Secretary General for Bureau of Management at UNDP ordered an immediate shut-down of all access to ACP Procurement Database. 

Yuge also dictated that the office of Fridakis and friends implement Phase Nr#2 of the so called "ICT Risk Strategy" which means:

- all internal and external communications including email/VSat/eFax be put under tight watch;

- all phone calls internal and external including voice mail be put under tight watch;

It is also reported that many staffers while they can access CNN and other media as usual they are experiencing 8 - 15 minutes delays in accessing the FOX-NEWS stories, InnercityPress and UNDP Watch.

At least 8 staffers from RBLAC (Latin America Bureau) and PSO (Procurement Support Office) has been called for "questioning" at the Office of UNDP's Chief Investigator Mr. Dubuois.

Anonymous sources say that the OAPR Investigators are nervous and pressured to find the "culprits" of who leaked the Venezuela story outside. Sources also say that the climate inside RBLAC is tense and everyone is afraid of the other, and Professionals have started to finger-point each other, while G-support staff is kept under strict control and out of the "loupe".

Escáneres por $2,3 millones adquiridos a través del PNUD - parecen haberse esfumado en un rastro de papeles

Escáneres por $2,3 millones adquiridos a través del  PNUD  
(Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo), bajo el contrato RBLAC/07/066, para ser utilizados en los aeropuertos nacionales parecen haberse esfumado en un rastro de papeles. Según la PNUD, la compra de 19 máquinas ProVisión se realizó en nombre del Seniat a L3 Communications. Sin embargo, esta compañía asegura que los únicos escáneres enviados el año pasado fueron para el sistema carcelario. Fox News, tras la historia desde el 20 de marzo, reveló documentos confidenciales internos que evidencian que el contrato, sin licitación, se le otorgó a una firma venezolana llamada SETRONIX, C.A.

Did Setronix Team ever delivered the Airport Scanners ? ...(UNDP will never tell)

As long as the United Nations have immunity, UNDP leadership will never tell the truth about Airport Scanners which never maded to Venezuela, and whereabout of 2.3 Million Dollars that disappeared inside the UNDP's financial books.

This is how it happened:

UNDP LYING FOR THE RECORD (uncovered)

UNDP Statement 1:

An April 1 story on Fox News by George Russell asserts that UNDP awarded a $2.3 million contract for airport scanners in Venezuela without competitive bidding. UNDP made it clear to Mr. Russell that a full competitive process was in fact followed.
[Click here to see UNDP’s response to Mr. Russell’s question.]
[Click here to see UNDP’s full exchange with Fox News.]

Additionally, Point No. 5 of the very document cited by Mr. Russell actually confirms that the contact was competitively bid.
[Click here to view the internal UNDP document.]

TRUTH

If you click on the above document from the UNDP website, the document reads out :

Caso Prepuesto: Solicitud de excepcion a un proceso competitivo, para contratar
con la empresa SETRONIX, C.A. (venezuela), por un monto total de US$
2,375,000.00, provenientes de recursos financieros del Gobierno de Venezuela.

UNDP Statement 2:

Mr. Russell’s claim that “financial payments listings are normally not made public by UNDP’s top management” is also inaccurate. All UNDP contracts valued at more than $100,000 are part of the public record.

TRUTH

If you click on the UNDP's Procurement Notices Site, any search under AWARDS would come empty. Making the above claim from UNDP another LIE.

Did UNDP Venezuela become part of illegal funding of FARC ?