Sadikoglu v. United Nations Development Programme
as 1:2011cv00294
Plaintiff: Kahraman Sadikoglu
Defendant: United Nations Development Programme
Presiding Judge: P. Kevin Castel
Cause Of Action: Diversity-Other Contract
Showing posts with label peri johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peri johnson. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Contractor files against UNDP in Southern District Court
finally a contractor who was for more than 5 years played by UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and its Administrator Kemal Dervis - has finally filed with the Southern District Court in New York.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
UN Belatedly Suspends Indian Enron Satyam, Puts Contracts Under Assessment, No Accountability on Oracle Yet
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, January 14 -- The UN has belatedly suspended as a vendor Satyam, and has put under review the ongoing contracts of this so-called Indian Enron, including a $6 million deal reached long after the World Bank first suspended the company. On January 13, Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Michele Montas to explain how Satyam got this contract, why the UN's Inter-Agency Procurement Task Force process, meant to share contractor information throughout the UN system, had failed. Ms. Montas said she was unaware of the controversy. Video here.
Hours later, Inner City Press asked Assistant Secretary General Warren Sach about the scandal. He said that UN affiliated agencies are supposed to inform others of their suspension, by correspondence and through databases, which the World Bank appears to have failed to do.
On January 14, the Spokesperson's Office answered Inner City Press' question-
Subj: Your question yesterday on Satyam
From: unspokesperson-donotreply [at] un.org
To: Matthew Lee [at] innercitypress.com
Sent: 1/14/2009 10:04:28 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Satyam has been suspended from the UN Secretariat vendor database. The information has been communicated to the UN procurement system and the UN Global Marketplace. Ongoing contracts with Satyam are currently under assessment.
An ongoing five year contract between the UN Secretariat and Satyam for over $6 million began on July 18, 2008, for "talent management software." It is time for the UN to provide further information on how this happened, what will be done and who will be held accountable.
UN's Ban and computers, Satyam not shown, even in suspension database
In late December 2008, Inner City Press exposed that the UN purchased 30,000 licenses from Oracle to a computer program called Seibel, a so-called Customer Relations Management (CRM) system, and has left them unused.
That contract is for $7.5 million, of which over $3 million have already been paid to Oracle. But the licenses have never been used, according to UN computer system personnel. These whistleblowers, outraged at the waste and of accountability they say is pervasive, have directed Inner City Press to the documentary evidence of the phantom contract. In the UN's online Procurement database, the information about the Seibel purchase from Oracle is substantially less detailed than from other purchases. For other purchases, the specifications of the procurement are online, often dozens of pages. For this purchase from Oracle, there are no online specifications.
Internal whistleblowers tell Inner City Press that worse than the mis-management that led to the purchase of 30,000 licenses well before they would or even could be used is the cover-up that has occurred afterwards. They also identify as problematic the UN's contracting with EMC Corporation to purchase licenses for a program called Documentum, ostensibly to replace the UN's Official Document System for the UN's "Enterprise Content Management" system, ECM.
The flawed contracting began under the tenure of Eduardo Blinder, who has since migrated to the even less overseen International Computing Center, to which the UN Secretariat outsources much of its work and procurement. More recently, the person responsible for the waste is the Officer in Charge who replaced Blinder, Chandramouli Ramanathan.
In the UN's basement, Ban Ki-moon's Secretariat's CRM and ECM are being considered for the UN's Fifth (Budgetary) Committee. But the Committee members have never been informed of the waste that has occurred. Nor has the Office of Internal Oversight Services, embroiled in its own scandal, done anything.
In a draft of the pending resolution provided to Inner City Press by a budget committee source, the Secretary-General is criticized for proceeding with CRM and ECM before making any proposal to the General Assembly.
Inner City Press has asked Ban's spokesperson Michele Montas about this critique from the General Assembly. Video here. Ms. Montas said she would have no comment at all until after the Assembly vote on the resolution which she said might not take place until Christmas Eve. But there has still been no comment. Watch this site.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
SATYAM: New procurement scandal shows scale of U.N.D.P problems
FoxNews yesterday brought into daylight another UNDP procurement scandal.
Now, an investigation by FOX News has revealed that a firm that was suspended from the World Bank list of authorised vendors in February 2008, still received over $4m from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The reason? Well, according to UNDP officials, as they are a legally separate U.N. agency they are not bound to honour the World Bank - Procurement Service sanctions (sounds familiar).
The irony – not lost on those unforgiving souls at FOX – is that the UNDP is the premier agency through which the U.N. operates in most of the 160 countries it currently services, and is a leading figure in the program known (rather unfortunately given the current circumstances) as “One U.N” – a scheme designed to rationalise the delivery and efficiency of U.N. services across the globe.
Satyam, currently called "Indian Enron" - an IT outsourcing is the company who dealt with World Bank (WB) and other UN agencies, were dropped by World Bank after being involved in a high profile corruption scandal with Bank Officials.
However, documents obtained by FOX suggest that the ink was barely dry on the order to remove it from its list of vendors at World Bank than the UNDP was considering using the company to fulfil an order or "reviewing, removing and storing its HQ's- IT internal records".
The news is likely to come as a devastating blow to the U.N. and U.N.D.P., but clearly illustrates the procurement challenges facing such a vast organisations. This leopard, it seems, will need more time to convince a sceptical public that it has changed its spots.
The U.N.: Satyam's Spreading Stain
Monday , January 12, 2009
By George Russell
The World Bank, a cornerstone of the United Nations' global anti-poverty effort, failed to tell the rest of the world organization that it had banned now-imploding Satyam Computer Services last February from further business following a corruption probe — and thus allowed the U.N. to enter into a $6 million deal for technology services with Satyam as recently as this July, FOX News has learned.
U.N. officials were still silent in the wake of questions sent to them by FOX News last week about the $6 million deal between the U.N. Secretariat and Satyam Computer Services, the Indian communications technology company that is embroiled in the largest financial fraud in that country's history.
Details of the contentious contract, reference number PD/C0102/08, are prominently displayed on a U.N. Procurement Department website, commonly accessed by procurement officials from across the U.N. system.
• Click here to see the contract award announcement.
The contract award notice proclaims that Satyam was hired effective July 18, 2008, through July 13, 2013, to work on "E/Staffing/Talent Management Software, Implementation and Training Services" — all within the sensitive U.N. human resources management system.
What made the contract a shock was that it came into force five months after the World Bank — the world's largest anti-poverty lender and a key member of the U.N. system — banned Satyam as a supplier for eight years, after a three-year investigation revealed extensive improper financial dealings with a top World Bank official. The investigation was one of the most extensive in the bank's history. The official involved, chief information officer Mohamed Muhsin, was escorted from the building in 2005 before his scheduled retirement, and permanently banned from the World Bank in 2007.
At the time of the investigation and banning, Satyam had been declared a "strategic partner" with the World Bank in all of its information processing activities, and had received hundreds of millions of dollars in World Bank business since the partnership was announced in 2002.
In fact, the World Bank has only been grudgingly and partially forthcoming to anyone about Satyam. In the wake of FOX News stories in October through December that revealed the improprieties scandal and the Satyam ban, the World Bank admitted late last week to the Wall Street Journal that it kept Satyam's eight-year punishment a secret from the general public.
Click here to see the FOX News story about the debarment.
Late Sunday, the Bank suddenly put on its website announcements of Satyam's banning, along with two other software companies that were banned in 2007 for improper activities. That sudden spate of World Bank transparency came after FOX News on Jan. 5 sent a variety of questions about the recent U.N. human resources contract to senior U.N. officials, who acknowledged their receipt. Despite promises to respond, the questions had not been answered before this article was published. Questions forwarded on Jan. 8 to World Bank spokesman Carl Hanlon were not even acknowledged.
But FOX News' examination of the latest $6 million deal has revealed that the institution kept its sanctions against Satyam and the other banned firms secret from the rest of the United Nations. That secrecy came even though the Bank and more than a score of U.N. organizations supposedly keep each other informed of their dealings through a variety of unified procurement sites, and have pledged to free their multibillion dollar supplier systems from scandals that have dogged the U.N.procurement system, in particular, since 2005.
The World Bank and other U.N. institutions have another place to inform each other of important anti-corruption decisions like the Satyam ban. They all sit together on a 28-member committee known as the U.N. Inter-Agency Procurement Working Group. According to a mission statement for IAPWG, adopted in 2006, the group exists "in order to promote the strategic importance of Procurement and Supply Chain Management in program and service delivery in a transparent and accountable manner." It also aims to further "the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement function within the UN System, through ... collaborative procurement arrangements, simplification and harmonization of procurement practices, and by fostering professionalism amongst staff that are responsible for procurement."
Click here to see the working group's membership.
To discover whether the World Bank had informed the IAPWG of its actions against Satyam, FOX News queried yet another U.N. organization, the United Nations Development Program, one of whose officials has been named as the working group secretary. A reply from a UNDP spokesman disclaimed responsibility for managing the talking shop, but underlined that UNDP itself only learned initially about the World Bank sanctions against Satyam from "media reports."
UNDP says it thereafter "proactively" approached both the World Bank and Satyam about those reports, and "as a result of these conversations, UNDP took a decision not to renew a one-year service contract with the organization, signed in December 2007. UNDP has since begun "to evaluate the phase-out while minimizing the risks to our information systems," the spokesman added. "UNDP currently has 11 Satyam technical consultants working on its information systems."
"It is worth noting," the spokesman added, "that UNDP's review of the published World Bank list of barred vendors did not turn up Satyam's name, in spite of such references in the media to Satyam having been debarred."
FOX News asked U.N. procurement officials whether it had specifically queried the World Bank or other U.N. institutions about any blemish on Satyam's record, as part of its due diligence before awarding the most recent Satyam contract. To date, FOX News has received no reply.
FOX News also asked the World Bank whether it had received such a request for information from any U.N. procurement officials and added an additional question: whether the World Bank would expect any other U.N. organization to reply if the World Bank itself sought information on a prospective supplier. To date, receipt of those questions has not been acknowledged.
Now that the Satyam scandal has expanded into a $1 billion fraud and the arrest of its top officials in India, the World Bank's decision to keep the rest of the U.N. in the dark about its sanctions against Satyam raise many more questions.
Among them: how many other parts of the U.N.'s far-flung and decentralized network of institutions have made deals with Satyam, and how many have deals still in place? What jobs do Satyam contract employees fill in the rest of the U.N. system?
Most intriguingly: were the financial improprieties Satyam committed at the World Bank — which involved providing preferential shares to a top official who was instrumental in making the firm a strategic partner of the bank — repeated anywhere else in the U.N. system?
And above all, to what extent does the World Bank-Satyam case reveal that the U.N.'s scandal-ridden procurement system — which spends billions annually — is still badly broken, and the will to clean it up remains unfocussed at best?
That question has been raised frequently about the U.N. since the notorious Oil for Food scandal of 2004 and again in 2005, after FOX News revealed a variety of corruption schemes by Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian senior employee in the U.N.'s multibillion-dollar procurement system — the same system where Satyam's current $6 million contract also remains. U.N. investigators subsequently described the procurement system as wrapped in "systematic abuse," "a pattern of corrupt practises" and a "culture of impunity."
In the wake of those scandals, the U.N. has repeatedly promised to implement reforms, including formation of a special procurement task force to root out corruption. But that task force expired at the end of 2008, when the U.N. General Assembly, under pressure from Russia, among other nations, starved the task force of funds.
By that time, the U.N. had already demonstrated that sanctions against corrupt practices in one part of the U.N. system didn't translate into similar actions in other parts.
In January 2007, FOX News revealed that within a month after the U.N. Procurement Department banned an Italian firm, Corimec S.A., from its vendor lists, the United Nations Development Program gave the same firm a $2.1 million contract for emergency housing kits. The reason: UNDP officials declared that as a legally separate U.N. agency, they were not bound to honor the procurement service sanction. (Corimec has since been rehabilitated as a U.N. vendor, after installing an anti-corruption compliance program.)
At least back then, however, the U.N. Secretariat was giving public lip service to the anti-corruption drive. At the time that FOX News published its report on Corimec, the main overall U.N. procurement website, known as the U.N. Global Marketplace, proclaimed on its home page that "United Nations agencies participating in the U.N. Global Marketplace strictly enforce a policy of zero tolerance concerning unethical, unprofessional or fraudulent acts of UN contractors. Accordingly, any registered company that is found to have undertaken unethical, unprofessional or fraudulent activities will be suspended or forbidden from continuing business relations with the United Nations."
When FOX News inspected the U.N. Global Marketplace site prior to publishing this article, that statement no longer appeared on the website's home page.
George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.
Monday, October 27, 2008
UN Prayer: Please, God, Let Obama Win
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2008; A17
UNITED NATIONS -- There are no "Obama 2008" buttons, banners or T-shirts visible here at U.N. headquarters, but it might be difficult to find a sliver of territory in the United States more enthusiastic over the prospect of the Illinois senator winning the White House.
An informal survey of more than two dozen U.N. staff members and foreign delegates showed that the overwhelming majority would prefer that Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency, saying they think that the Democrat would usher in a new agenda of multilateralism after an era marked by Republican disdain for the world body.
Obama supporters hail from Russia, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere. One American employee here seemed puzzled that he was being asked whetherSen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was even a consideration. "Obama was and is unstoppable," the official said. "Please, God, let him win," he added.
"It would be hard to find anybody, I think, at the U.N. who would not believe that Obama would be a considerable improvement over any other alternative," said William H. Luers, executive director of the United Nations Association. "It's been a bad eight years, and there is a lot of bad feeling over it."
Conservatives who are skeptical of the United Nations said they are not surprised by the political tilt. "The fact is that most conservatives, most Republicans don't worship at the altar in New York, and I think that aggravates them more than anything else," said John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "What they want is the bending of the knee, and they'll get it from an Obama administration."
The candidates have said little about their plans for the United Nations, but Obama has highlighted his desire to pursue diplomacy more assertively than the Bush administration, whereas McCain has called for the establishment of a league of democracies, which many here fear is code for sidelining the United Nations.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has avoided showing a public preference about the presidential campaign -- although he has hinted at a soft spot for Obama in private gatherings, according to U.N. officials. His top advisers say they think McCain and Obama would support many of Ban's priorities, including restraints on production of greenhouse gases that fuel climate change.
"The secretary general and the Secretariat of the United Nations take no position on the U.S. election," said Ban's chief spokeswoman, Michele Montas. "The secretary general deeply respects the democratic process, and he looks forward to working with whomever the American people choose."
Many U.N. rank and file are less circumspect, saying they see in Obama's multicultural background -- a Kenyan father, an Indonesian stepfather and a mother and grandparents from Kansas -- a reflection of themselves. "We do not consider him an African American," said Congo's U.N. ambassador, Atoki Ileka. "We consider him an African."
One U.N. official threw a party over the summer and asked guests to place stickers of either an elephant or a donkey on the front door to show their political preference. At the end of the night, the door was covered with about 30 donkeys and two elephants. "We found out that one of the Republicans was an American and the other couldn't vote," according to a U.N. official who attended. "So we convinced the American to vote for Obama."
"I have not heard a single person who will support McCain; if they do, they are in hiding," said another U.N. Obama booster from an African country. "The majority of people here believe in multilateralism," he said. "The Republicans were constantly questioning the relevance of the United Nations."
For the small minority of U.N. officials who have stuck with McCain -- only two of 28 U.N. officials and diplomats questioned said they favored the Arizona senator -- life in Turtle Bay can seem lonely. "I keep my mouth shut," said one American official here who plans to vote for McCain. "Everyone is knocking on wood, counting the days to the elections. Some Americans here are planning to move to Washington," in search of jobs in an Obama administration.
"It will be devastating if Obama loses," the official said. "There has been such an amount of faith placed on the outcome."
The official, who like all other Secretariat staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity, recalled that Democrats have not always been so supportive of the United Nations, citing the Clinton administration's lone 1996 campaign to block the reelection of then-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. And some foreign delegations, including Georgia, have been outspoken in their support of the foreign policy approach of McCain, who reacted quickly and sharply to Russian intervention in Georgia.
Still, the Obama candidacy has enormous emotional resonance among delegates from developing countries, particularly for what it says about race in America. They recall that one of the United Nations' most famous civil servants, Ralph Bunche -- an African American who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his Middle East mediation -- could never have risen to the same heights in U.S. foreign policy circles. And Kofi Annan, the first black U.N. secretary general, said the prospect of an Obama presidency would be "phenomenal."
Even while critics of the Bush administration here root for Obama, they acknowledge that the U.S. attitude toward the United Nations has improved dramatically in recent years, citing cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.
They say President Bush deserves much credit for supporting U.N.-backed initiatives, including the provision of billions of dollars in funding to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa as well as support for the largest expansion of U.N. peacekeeping in history. And they expect that whichever candidate prevails will be compelled by the United States' falling financial fortunes to work more cooperatively with foreign governments.
"We don't have voting rights," said Yukio Takasu, Japan's ambassador to the United Nations.
But, he added, "We expect whoever [wins] in Washington will have a fresh look at the U.N. and the utility of working through the U.N. And, of course, we have to adjust to them."
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
How Much Discretion? U.N.'s Anti-Poverty Program Wants Unlimited Spending Power
FOXNEWS
That’s up from the current limit of $50,000 which can be dispersed without regulatory oversight.
UNDP argues that the new ability to write such checks without normal authorization would only bring its discretionary powers into line with those currently exercised by other U.N. programs, like UNICEF and the World Food Program (WFP).
The problem is that at the Rome-based WFP, the use of the same unlimited discretionary authority to pay off job-eliminated contract employees was condemned just last year as a $90 million abuse of authority and a violation both of U.N. payment rules for contractors, and of fairness to longer-term employees.
The condemnation was issued by the only budget oversight committee that includes the entire membership of the U.N. It was ignored both by WFP bureaucrats and by the WFP’s 36-nation governing executive board.
UNDP’s desire to have the same unlimited discretionary power for its No. 2 bureaucrat, Associate Administrator Ad Melkert, is contained in support documents for the next meeting of its own, similarly-sized executive board, which meets in New York City from September 8 to 12.
The discretionary money is known in technical parlance as “ex gratia” funds, which UNDP describes as “payments which are made where there is no legal liability to UNDP, but the moral obligation justifies making such payments, which are in the interest of UNDP.” The question of what defines that interest is left to top administrators to decide.
• Click here to see the UNDP submission on ex gratia payments.
The case UNDP cites in asking for the approval for sweeping new check-writing powers is humanitarian: payments to families of staffers killed in the bombing of the U.N.’s headquarters in Algiers last December. In all, 17 U.N. employees were killed in the blast, including seven affiliated with UNDP.
According to the submission, UNDP says it was unable to make “ex gratia” payments to some of the Algiers victims’ families due to the current $50,000 limit. “UNDP should be able to show compassion when addressing such cases,” the submission argues.
(Although UNDP does not say so in the papers it has presented to its executive board, the organization’s insurance policy provides only $180,000 in death benefits for full time staffers and $80,000 for local consultants.)
Few would disagree with the impulse to compensate victims of such a tragedy. But the UNDP document does not state why an unlimited spending power is appropriate, even under those circumstances.
Nor does it state that the same discretionary spending power could also be used in a wide variety of other circumstances. Among them: settling lawsuits by aggrieved contractors or employees without resorting to U.N. arbitration, or a variety of other legal cases where misdeeds or mismanagement might be attributed, rightly or wrongly, to management, and where management might prefer to avoid seeing the claim become public.
The possibility of just such liabilities was revealed in a confidential UNDP draft audit of its own procurement operations, obtained by FOX News last May, which described the operation as awash in shoddy paperwork and faulty bidding processes, and lacking the expertise to evaluate its most expensive technology purchases, while procurement ballooned to more than $2.6 billion.
The same document described the organization as afflicted with “apparent conflict of interest” at the top procurement levels, where the people charged with vetting the process for flaws were also members of the procurement staff.
• Click here to see the draft audit.
Another circumstance where ex gratia payments can be used, apparently, is the funding of unauthorized severance packages to contract U.N. employees who are not entitled to such payments under U.N. rules and regulations.
Just such payments were examined and condemned at length little more than a year ago, in documents submitted to the World Food Program’s executive board by the U.N.’s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), a body made up of representatives of all U.N. nation states.
The ACABQ offers opinions on U.N. financial matters on behalf of the entire General Assembly, while each U.N. program’s executive board is made up of a much smaller number of nations.
In a scathing review of one aspect of the World Food Program’s ex gratia spending, the ACABQ noted that the emergency food aid provider had used its discretionary power to make unauthorized severance payments to 417 contract employees, at sites ranging from Bangkok to Johannesburg to Panama.
The payments totaled “in the range of $90 million,” but the amount could have been larger; the ACABQ noted that the World Food Program itself had provided the numbers as estimates, but without “the benefit of actuarial evaluation,” meaning an outside cross-check.
Short-term U.N. employee contracts do not provide for severance or other benefits when they expire, the advisory committee noted. It observed that WFP management appeared to be using the “inappropriate” severance payments to compensate employees where short-term contracts had been repeatedly renewed to avoid handing out the security of longer-term arrangements.
The ACABQ noted that the unauthorized ex gratia payment practice “has significant system-wide implications” — meaning that other U.N. agencies or programs might imitate WFP’s alleged abuse of the ex gratia check-writing power.
The U.N. advisory committee urged that WFP’s executive board should “urgently” take up the issue of unauthorized ex gratia termination payments, and also look at WFP’s staffing policies.
Click here to see the ACABQ report.
That didn’t happen. Instead, the executive board “took note” of the advisory committee’s report and recommendations, a course of action that did not require doing anything the ACABQ suggested. It also “took note” of WFP management’s explanation that the huge unauthorized severance deal was part of a downsizing of the organization that was expected to end in 2009.
Whether the downsizing is still considered a good idea is an open question. In May, 2008, WFP suddenly declared that a “silent tsunami” of rising food prices had placed an additional 100 million people around the world at risk of starvation. WFP has since boosted its biennial budget request from donor nations to more than $6 billion.
The WFP severance debacle has already created one important precedent for the sprawling U.N. system of funds, programs and agencies: the argument that unlimited ex gratia spending power should exist for other parts of the U.N. system too.
That is the core argument in UNDP’s submission for its upcoming executive board meeting: “With the proposed amendment [to its rules], UNDP seeks to harmonize its approach with those of the other Funds and Programmes,” the organization declares.
UNDP also notes that yet another U.N. organization, the United Nations Population Fund — which shares an executive board with UNDP — is asking the same unlimited authority.
In its submission, UNDP refrains from saying that it will disclose the purposes to which it puts the ex gratia money it intends to spend. Instead, the organization says that it will put the 12-month total in its budget statement.
At the same time, UNDP assures its board that the cost of the change, though potentially unlimited, will be small. “UNDP does not expect the proposed change to result in a significant financial impact for UNDP over a period of time, given the low number of such payments that UNDP has had to address to date,” it says.
Why, then, is UNDP seeking an unlimited ceiling on the payments?
FOX News asked UNDP that question, among others, in a detailed query about the ex gratia request on August 12. UNDP acknowledged receipt of the questions but had provided no answers by the time this article was published.
FOX News also asked UNDP about another change in its rules surrounding the ex gratia payments, which has the effect of removing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office from any role in the process.
Under UNDP’s previous rules, an opinion regarding the lack of a legal liability for any ex gratia payment was required of the Secretary General’s Office of Legal Affairs before the payment could be made. Under new rules, that authority will be transferred to UNDP’s Legal Support Office — which reports to the top executives who will hold the newly unlimited check-writing power.
Neither Ban’s office nor UNDP replied to FOX News' questions about the possibilities for conflict of interest in this arrangement, and about the possible loss of centralized oversight over the U.N. in the process.
In its submission, UNDP argues that the involvement of Ban’s lawyers in the ex gratia procedure is a “remnant” of days prior to 2000, when the UNDP’s legal support office didn’t exist.
But in 2004, UNDP got a $10,000 increase in its ex gratia limit without requesting removal of the “remnant” of outside involvement.
UNDP’s other argument for using its own hand-picked lawyers is — once again — that the World Food Program is already doing it.
Despite its frequent references to WFP, the UNDP submission contains no reference to the food program’s $90 million ex gratia boondoggle, which in the opinion of the General Assembly’s financial overseers had involved an abuse of that authority to paper over a major distortion of its hiring and firing practices.
And in fact, the ACABQ itself is making no reference to its previous dismay over WFP’s ex gratia caper. In its own submission to UNDP’s executive board, the ACABQ notes that UNDP’s internal and external auditors have raised no objection, and recommends that the board adopt UNDP’s unlimited funding request at its upcoming session.
George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
UNDP accused over firm with suspected militant links
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL1436115.html
Wed 14 May 2008, 11:42 GMT
[-] Text [+] By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) - A U.N. agency supported a Somali money transfer firm with suspected links to Islamist militants in a project that was corrupt and failed to curb the risks of money laundering and terrorist finance, a former employee said.
Ismail Ahmed, who worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said the agency's Somalia country office had provided "critical support" to the company, Dalsan, between 2003 and 2005, including intervening on its behalf with Swiss prosecutors and U.S. regulators.
The case highlights the risks associated with the financial industry of a country widely seen as a failed state and potential breeding ground for terrorism. Somalia depends more than any other country on money remittances from abroad.
"The true cost of the fraud and corruption in this (UNDP) programme is not just the funds lost but how it damaged the Somali remittance industry," Ahmed wrote in a detailed dossier of allegations which he made available to Reuters.
"Overall, UNDP's remittance programme appears to have done more harm than good."
UNDP spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the agency was investigating Ahmed's corruption charges and his allegation that he was punished for blowing the whistle, including by having his contract terminated.
"Clearly UNDP takes all these allegations extremely seriously and we are in fact investigating them thoroughly," Dujarric said. He declined comment on specific allegations but said those relating to Dalsan would definitely be investigated.
MILITANT LINKS
Ahmed accused the UNDP of backing Dalsan -- which collapsed in 2006, leaving depositors with losses of $30 million -- despite knowing of its suspected links to militant groups.
Dalsan's co-founder, Mohamed Sheikh Osman, was once the official spokesman of Islamist movement al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, proscribed by the United States and U.N. as a terrorist group.
Chairman Abdilkadir Hashi Farah Ayro was the brother of Aden Hashi Ayro, head of the al Shabaab militant group and mastermind of an insurgency against Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies, who was killed in a U.S. air strike on May 1.
Ahmed said in a telephone interview the UNDP, which was working to help the Somali financial industry comply with international anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering rules, backed Dalsan after another company boycotted its programme.
"They were desperate to get some support from the industry," he said. "They thought at the time it was a risk worth taking."
Ahmed, a British national of Somali origin with an economics doctorate and over 20 years of experience in Somali development issues, worked for the UNDP from 2005 to 2007 on a programme to support the Somali remittance industry and strengthen its compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism rules.
The UNDP launched the scheme in 2002 after the largest firm, al-Barakaat, was blacklisted by Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States for funding terrorism.
In his dossier, Ahmed described support that the UNDP provided to Dalsan in Switzerland, the United States, Dubai, Britain and elsewhere. He said the UNDP's Somalia remittance programme had damaged the industry it was meant to help.
"UNDP interventions distorted the market by encouraging a number of unscrupulous and opportunistic companies to enter the market," he wrote. This led to an unusually high failure rate for Somali money transfer companies, with around 15 collapsing between November 2001 and May 2006.
He said money transfers of about $2 billion a year to Somalia and other Horn of Africa countries remain vulnerable to money laundering and terrorist finance -- channelling funds through the financial system for the benefit of militant groups.
"Two billion dollars are going through systems which are non-compliant, and that is pretty serious," he said. (Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Wed 14 May 2008, 11:42 GMT
[-] Text [+] By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) - A U.N. agency supported a Somali money transfer firm with suspected links to Islamist militants in a project that was corrupt and failed to curb the risks of money laundering and terrorist finance, a former employee said.
Ismail Ahmed, who worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said the agency's Somalia country office had provided "critical support" to the company, Dalsan, between 2003 and 2005, including intervening on its behalf with Swiss prosecutors and U.S. regulators.
The case highlights the risks associated with the financial industry of a country widely seen as a failed state and potential breeding ground for terrorism. Somalia depends more than any other country on money remittances from abroad.
"The true cost of the fraud and corruption in this (UNDP) programme is not just the funds lost but how it damaged the Somali remittance industry," Ahmed wrote in a detailed dossier of allegations which he made available to Reuters.
"Overall, UNDP's remittance programme appears to have done more harm than good."
UNDP spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the agency was investigating Ahmed's corruption charges and his allegation that he was punished for blowing the whistle, including by having his contract terminated.
"Clearly UNDP takes all these allegations extremely seriously and we are in fact investigating them thoroughly," Dujarric said. He declined comment on specific allegations but said those relating to Dalsan would definitely be investigated.
MILITANT LINKS
Ahmed accused the UNDP of backing Dalsan -- which collapsed in 2006, leaving depositors with losses of $30 million -- despite knowing of its suspected links to militant groups.
Dalsan's co-founder, Mohamed Sheikh Osman, was once the official spokesman of Islamist movement al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, proscribed by the United States and U.N. as a terrorist group.
Chairman Abdilkadir Hashi Farah Ayro was the brother of Aden Hashi Ayro, head of the al Shabaab militant group and mastermind of an insurgency against Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies, who was killed in a U.S. air strike on May 1.
Ahmed said in a telephone interview the UNDP, which was working to help the Somali financial industry comply with international anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering rules, backed Dalsan after another company boycotted its programme.
"They were desperate to get some support from the industry," he said. "They thought at the time it was a risk worth taking."
Ahmed, a British national of Somali origin with an economics doctorate and over 20 years of experience in Somali development issues, worked for the UNDP from 2005 to 2007 on a programme to support the Somali remittance industry and strengthen its compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism rules.
The UNDP launched the scheme in 2002 after the largest firm, al-Barakaat, was blacklisted by Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States for funding terrorism.
In his dossier, Ahmed described support that the UNDP provided to Dalsan in Switzerland, the United States, Dubai, Britain and elsewhere. He said the UNDP's Somalia remittance programme had damaged the industry it was meant to help.
"UNDP interventions distorted the market by encouraging a number of unscrupulous and opportunistic companies to enter the market," he wrote. This led to an unusually high failure rate for Somali money transfer companies, with around 15 collapsing between November 2001 and May 2006.
He said money transfers of about $2 billion a year to Somalia and other Horn of Africa countries remain vulnerable to money laundering and terrorist finance -- channelling funds through the financial system for the benefit of militant groups.
"Two billion dollars are going through systems which are non-compliant, and that is pretty serious," he said. (Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Free Press Stifled at United Nations, Reporters Say
Fred Lucas
Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) - Reporters covering the United Nations complain that the organization, whose Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for freedom of the press, has been trying to stifle reporters covering the U.N. itself.
This month, for example, U.N. officials reportedly seized videotapes from journalists who recorded the site of a U.N. helicopter crash in Nepal.
In addition, the group Reporters Without Borders says the U.N. yielded to pressure from certain member countries in refusing to recognize "Freedom of Expression Day."
Earlier this year, the U.N. threatened to pull the credentials of Inner City Press reporter Matthew Russell Lee after he reported embarrassing stories about the U.N. Development Program (UNDP). Inner City Press also was delisted from Google News for a time, fueling speculation that the U.N. had played a role in that incident.
Critics of the U.N.'s treatment of the press say these are just a few recent examples of U.N. hostility toward, and intimidation of, journalists who ask questions that U.N. officials don't want to answer.
In recent years, the United Nations has come under fire for corruption scandals, including allegations of bribery in the oil-for-food program, sexual abuse by U.N. relief workers, and, more recently, U.N. money allegedly ending up in North Korea's missile development program.
The press has a harder time holding the U.N. accountable than it does U.S. government agencies because the U.N. has no equivalent to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, Lee told a forum at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Monday.
After media attention was focused on Lee's plight, Google put Inner City Press back on its list, and the U.N. did not pull his credentials. Still, Lee said he would like to see more coverage of the goings-on at the U.N.
"Many of the journalists there are great journalists, but they need access, whether it's to the U.N. high officials or the ambassadors on the Security Council," Lee said. "There is less investigative work. Oil-for-Food, there was some great work done. There are day-to-day misdeeds -- corruption and lack of accountability that doesn't get covered because the journalists there are mostly there to cover the Security Council or Iran sanctions, Gaza and Israel. How the U.N. functions is a wide open field."
Article 19 of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls on governments to promote freedom of the press, said William Davis, director of the United Nations Information Center.
"We live in an imperfect world," said Davis, who spoke at the Heritage gathering in defense of the U.N. "Every year when these principles are put to the test, there are going to be shortcomings from member states and ourselves."
Davis noted that the General Assembly commemorates May 3 of every year as World Press Freedom Day, and he said the U.N. has always been a strong advocate for freedom of the press. But he said accreditation is based on whether a reporter is "formally registered with a media organization in a country recognized by the U.N. General Assembly."
He stressed that the U.N. holds daily news briefings for reporters and puts an abundance of information on its Web site.
However, former Wall Street Journal reporter Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, scoffed at the notion that the U.N. is transparent.
Rosett was one of the leading journalists who helped break the oil-for-food scandal.
"The United Nations Information Center spends well over $100 million per year--much of that your tax money--on what they call public information," Rosett said. "It's important not to confuse that with honesty and frankness and revelatory disclosures to the press. It's largely propaganda. You will find nothing about the real scandals, dirt, and corruption."
Rosett said that when scandals arise at the U.N., there is a propensity to call for an investigation and then turn aside reporters and "not answer questions on the grounds that it's an ongoing investigation."
Often these investigations are not trustworthy because the U.N. is investigating itself and making its own rules, said Beatrice Edwards, international program director for the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group.
The U.N. has new whistleblower rules, but those often are handled internally, Edwards said.
"If they are subject to retaliation for disclosing fraud or corruption at the U.N., then they would go to a hearing to protest what has happened to them, (but the hearing) is presided over by the institution which they are disclosing perhaps embarrassing information about," Edwards said.
"So they face a forum where the institution itself is both the defendant and the judge. The record of whistleblowers being vindicated or prevailing in these kinds of forums or hearings is very, very poor."
Edwards noted that the U.N., World Bank and other international bodies have diplomatic immunity and are not subject to freedom of information laws.
"If they are able to shut down free press or free speech inside, to the extent that they often try to, then we are really talking about very powerful, very wealthy, lawless organizations," she said.
Make media inquiries or request an interview with Fred Lucas.
Subscribe to the free CNSNews.com daily E-brief.
Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) - Reporters covering the United Nations complain that the organization, whose Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for freedom of the press, has been trying to stifle reporters covering the U.N. itself.
This month, for example, U.N. officials reportedly seized videotapes from journalists who recorded the site of a U.N. helicopter crash in Nepal.
In addition, the group Reporters Without Borders says the U.N. yielded to pressure from certain member countries in refusing to recognize "Freedom of Expression Day."
Earlier this year, the U.N. threatened to pull the credentials of Inner City Press reporter Matthew Russell Lee after he reported embarrassing stories about the U.N. Development Program (UNDP). Inner City Press also was delisted from Google News for a time, fueling speculation that the U.N. had played a role in that incident.
Critics of the U.N.'s treatment of the press say these are just a few recent examples of U.N. hostility toward, and intimidation of, journalists who ask questions that U.N. officials don't want to answer.
In recent years, the United Nations has come under fire for corruption scandals, including allegations of bribery in the oil-for-food program, sexual abuse by U.N. relief workers, and, more recently, U.N. money allegedly ending up in North Korea's missile development program.
The press has a harder time holding the U.N. accountable than it does U.S. government agencies because the U.N. has no equivalent to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, Lee told a forum at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Monday.
After media attention was focused on Lee's plight, Google put Inner City Press back on its list, and the U.N. did not pull his credentials. Still, Lee said he would like to see more coverage of the goings-on at the U.N.
"Many of the journalists there are great journalists, but they need access, whether it's to the U.N. high officials or the ambassadors on the Security Council," Lee said. "There is less investigative work. Oil-for-Food, there was some great work done. There are day-to-day misdeeds -- corruption and lack of accountability that doesn't get covered because the journalists there are mostly there to cover the Security Council or Iran sanctions, Gaza and Israel. How the U.N. functions is a wide open field."
Article 19 of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls on governments to promote freedom of the press, said William Davis, director of the United Nations Information Center.
"We live in an imperfect world," said Davis, who spoke at the Heritage gathering in defense of the U.N. "Every year when these principles are put to the test, there are going to be shortcomings from member states and ourselves."
Davis noted that the General Assembly commemorates May 3 of every year as World Press Freedom Day, and he said the U.N. has always been a strong advocate for freedom of the press. But he said accreditation is based on whether a reporter is "formally registered with a media organization in a country recognized by the U.N. General Assembly."
He stressed that the U.N. holds daily news briefings for reporters and puts an abundance of information on its Web site.
However, former Wall Street Journal reporter Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, scoffed at the notion that the U.N. is transparent.
Rosett was one of the leading journalists who helped break the oil-for-food scandal.
"The United Nations Information Center spends well over $100 million per year--much of that your tax money--on what they call public information," Rosett said. "It's important not to confuse that with honesty and frankness and revelatory disclosures to the press. It's largely propaganda. You will find nothing about the real scandals, dirt, and corruption."
Rosett said that when scandals arise at the U.N., there is a propensity to call for an investigation and then turn aside reporters and "not answer questions on the grounds that it's an ongoing investigation."
Often these investigations are not trustworthy because the U.N. is investigating itself and making its own rules, said Beatrice Edwards, international program director for the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group.
The U.N. has new whistleblower rules, but those often are handled internally, Edwards said.
"If they are subject to retaliation for disclosing fraud or corruption at the U.N., then they would go to a hearing to protest what has happened to them, (but the hearing) is presided over by the institution which they are disclosing perhaps embarrassing information about," Edwards said.
"So they face a forum where the institution itself is both the defendant and the judge. The record of whistleblowers being vindicated or prevailing in these kinds of forums or hearings is very, very poor."
Edwards noted that the U.N., World Bank and other international bodies have diplomatic immunity and are not subject to freedom of information laws.
"If they are able to shut down free press or free speech inside, to the extent that they often try to, then we are really talking about very powerful, very wealthy, lawless organizations," she said.
Make media inquiries or request an interview with Fred Lucas.
Subscribe to the free CNSNews.com daily E-brief.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
BM'nin 50 milyon $ borçlu olduğu Türk kim?
Tuzla Tersanesi'nin eski sahibi olan ünlü Türk armatör Kahraman Sadıkoğlu, Kemal Derviş'in başkanı olduğu Birleşmiş Milletler Kalkınma Programı (UNDP) tarafından dolandırıldığını iddia etti.
Amerikan Fox News kanalında konuşan Sadıkoğlu, Irak'ın Umm Kasr limanındaki 19 geminin temizlenmesi için UNDP'nin kendisine ödemesi gereken parayı vermediğini öne sürdü. Sadıkoğlu, “Saddam hükümetiyle Umm Kasr'daki Irak-İran savaşından kalma 19 hurda geminin çıkarılıp limanın boşaltılması için anlaşma yapmıştım. Tam işe başladık ki Irak Savaşı patladı.
BM yetkilileri limana ihtiyaç duyduklarını belirterek anlaşmanın geçerli olduğunu söyledi. Ama işin üzerinden beş yıl geçmesine rağmen UNDP 50 milyon doları ödemedi. Her gün 100 bin dolar faiz geliri kaybediyorum” dedi. Sadıkoğlu Aralık 2005'te Iraklı direnişçiler tarafından kaçırılmış, 3 ay sonra 500 bin dolar karşılığında serbest bırakılmıştı
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Victory Nr.# 2: Kemal Dervis cancels the transfer of Ms. Rema Devi Purushothaman to Peri's shop
well thanks to all those who contributed from both units, today we achieved another major victory. Kemal Dervis (from wherever he is) called in and cancelled the irregular transfer of Ms. Rema Devi Purushothaman as Nr.2 of Peri Johnson at Legal.
But this is far from done - the so called parallel transfer of F.N. from Legal to Human Resources, to create room for Ramesh's wife - seem to have created a victim. The victim have applied for the job of Nr.2 at HR and gone through all the selection process. The victim thinks that catapulting F.N. to the Nr.2 of HR, only to satisfy the pleasures of Peri Johnson, without proper process is irregular and might go as far as to open a case with the newly appointed OIC of Ethics Office - Bhalla. We will be publishing very soon the whole process of selection of the Nr.2 of HR. Stay with us !!
This shows that if we try to keep the information flowing and denounce the nepotism, illegality and corrupt behaviours in our management, we will be able to keep them accountable and "clean".
This is a great victory for all of UNDP staff - we shown to the High Priest that there is democracy even in church.
But this is far from done - the so called parallel transfer of F.N. from Legal to Human Resources, to create room for Ramesh's wife - seem to have created a victim. The victim have applied for the job of Nr.2 at HR and gone through all the selection process. The victim thinks that catapulting F.N. to the Nr.2 of HR, only to satisfy the pleasures of Peri Johnson, without proper process is irregular and might go as far as to open a case with the newly appointed OIC of Ethics Office - Bhalla. We will be publishing very soon the whole process of selection of the Nr.2 of HR. Stay with us !!
This shows that if we try to keep the information flowing and denounce the nepotism, illegality and corrupt behaviours in our management, we will be able to keep them accountable and "clean".
This is a great victory for all of UNDP staff - we shown to the High Priest that there is democracy even in church.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
