UNDP Jordan: Doesn't report on Ban Ki-moon's condemnation of attacks on American diplomats (doesn't feel is important)

Click here to see it yourself: http://www.undp-jordan.org/

How many Hamas members were paid under CASH-FOR-WORK programme from UNDP in Palestine Territories?

Why is UNDP's Helen Clark not willing to publish right away all the 4365 names of those registered vendors in West-Bank who receive CASH from UNDP's Programme in Palestine Territories?

Why are those vendors kept out of UNDP's ATLAS / Financial Corporate Software and who at UNDP certifies for those payments?

The Job Creation Programme (JCP) implements a yearly Cash-for-Work Project (CaWP) to employ the most vulnerable Palestine refugees as part of its emergency support work in the West Bank.

Why is the Cash-for-Work project needed?
· Poverty is chronic throughout the West Bank; the continuous conflict has had a severe impact on the Palestinian economy, despite some easing of movement restrictions from mid-2009, in September 2009 the World Bank affirmed this had not led to sustainable economic growth.
· Studies show that the unemployment levels are particularly high amongst refugees, at 26 percent, the highest being amongst the youth, at 54 percent.
· 29 percent of refugees both in and outside camps are food insecure, meaning they find it difficult to cover basic needs such as food.
· Households spend an average of 49 percent of their income on food, meaning they have very little left to spend on other essentials such as shelter and education, essentially further entrenching poverty through a cycle of debt.
· Due to debts, once a household has fallen into deep-poverty, it is more difficult to lift the family above the poverty line, which means they need more cash-for-work in order to feel a positive impact on their livelihood. CaWP has adapted its Programme to allow for such refugees to obtain work opportunities.

Who benefits?
· The programme helps all vulnerable refugees, especially the most vulnerable to food insecurity such as female-headed households, herders and the disabled.
· CaWP provides an income and basic security to help refugees cope with conflict-related economic hardship, such as land confiscation, destruction of homes and shops and loss of employment in Israel.
· CaWP currently provides 4,365 jobs per month, about 35 percent of which are carried out by women, 20 percent by youth aged 18-24 yrs, Three percent by herders and 0.5 percent by disabled.
· Between April 2010 and March 2011, JCP will create 80,000 short-term job opportunities (directly helping 40,000 households or 230,000 people), of which 28,000 jobs will be for women (35 percent of total), 2,400 for herders (3 percent of total) and 400 for people with disabilities (0.5 percent of total).
· JCP also caters for the specific needs of refugees living in Areas C and the Seam Zone by providing resources to help them resist forced displacement and better cope with land confiscations and settler harassment.
CaWP opportunities help to build health and educational facilities, maintain traditional handicrafts and backyard farming, and generates income for the poorest refugees.

How many beneficiaries are women?
· The project actively targets female beneficiaries by providing work opportunities which suit social values and are physically accessible to women.
· Female participation in CaWP has increased over 2009 to a steady 35 percent per month by the third quarter of the year. This is a rise of 15 percent from our current target of 20 percent, and will be our new minimum target for next year.
· To hire more women, JCP has provided special materials and tools for herding women (such as sewing machines and other materials for carpet weaving and handicraft) as well as for gender-sensitive jobs such as clerical work, assistance in nurseries, schools and libraries, and social work.
· Many female labourers have been hired by municipali­ties and village councils to help plan and implement JCP's CaWP activities.

What jobs does the program support?
· As an emergency programme, CaWP targets the most vulnerable Palestine refugees who tend to be those without employable skills. Therefore, the majority of jobs offered require skills that can be learned on the job or involve traditional skills and workmanship.
· UNRWA has developed a database (Project Daa'm) which measures the socio-economic vulnerability of each household in detail, thereby tackling the complex and multilayered issue of poverty in the West Bank. As part of its job creation activities, CaWP will target the most vulnerable families identified by Project Daa'm offering them community-based work opportunities most suitable to their profile.
· JCP provides labour for the Olive harvest every year thus helping the national economy and enabling refugees to access farmland in remote areas.
· JCP labourers work for periods of one to three months in villages and refugee camps or, for those whose movement is restricted (such as herders), in their immediate surroundings. They do a variety of jobs ranging from cleaning, rehabilitation and construction, farming, sewing, teaching and assisting in offices and educational facilities.
· Beneficiary labour is used to improve the refugees' living environment, the conditions of public works and the delivery of services, ultimately contributing to the welfare of the entire community.

How is the project implemented?
· JCP implements CaWP in close cooperation with stake-holders in all 19 refugee camps in the West Bank, including 34 UNRWA installations, and in over 160 municipalities and villages.
· The Programme relies on municipalities, heads of village councils, mukhtars and members of the refugee community in camps to draw-up action plans to absorb JCP labourers on a monthly or quarterly basis.
· JCP provides capacity-building workshops to ehance partners' awareness of the Programme and improve their ability to make use of the programme's services.
· JCP approves action plans and signs contracts with implementing partners.
· Beneficiaries receive a subsidy for their work, paid at the end of every working month by cheque.
· To verify beneficiary attendance and progress of work, JCP monitors regularly visit implementation sites.

Does the project make a difference?
· Yes. Families most often report using their subsidies from the project to purchase food or to repay debts; therefore, the project contributes to food security and allows beneficiaries to become viable creditors again.
· An evaluation of CaWP completed in April 2009 reported that on average 83 percent of respondents were satisfied with the project, with higher percentages amongst women and sanitation labourers. Some 68 percent reported to have improved family relations, and 66 percent had better self-esteem, suggesting the programme contributes to the wider well-being of the community.
· Residents of communities where the project is implemented enjoy better public services and infrastructure. Project beneficiaries have worked on schools, health centers, sewage systems, streets, parks, retaining walls, rehabilitation centers and even a zoo.

Who funds the Cash-for-Work Project?
· The project is made possible through the generous contributions of several donors as it is a multi-donor project.
· In 2008, its biggest donor was ECHO, the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid department. Since 1992 the European Commission's Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) has funded relief to millions of victims of both natural disasters and man-made crises outside the EU. Aid is channelled impartially, straight to victims, re­gardless of their race, religion and political beliefs. http://ec.europa.eu/ec ho
· Since the start of CaWP in 2004, ECHO has contributed about half of the project's overall costs.
· Other donors such as the governments of Australia, Belgium, Spain, Sweden and the United States, have also contributed generously.

Did Ahmadinejad Know About the Iranian Terror Plot on Washington?

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.Com

Terror and carnage in Washington, D.C., with the Saudi ambassador assassinated by a bomb while dining at a restaurant packed with 100-150 other customers, possibly including a number of senators. That’s what “elements” of Iran’s government allegedly had planned for this autumn, according to court documents and press statements released Tuesday by U.S. authorities.

Americans are just now learning some of the details of this Iranian terror plot, in connection with charges brought against American-Iranian dual national Manssor Arbabsiar, now under arrest in New York. The criminal complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, provides 21 pages of horrifying material, much of it amassed with the help of a paid undercover informant, who posed as an associate of the unnamed Mexican drug cartel the Iranians thought they had recruited for the hit (Barry Rubin, in a terrific Pajamas post, on what it all means, links to the complaint). The complaint lays out a trail in which Arbabsiar, a naturalized American living in Texas, conspired with members of Iran’s Quds Force, an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, to orchestrate the assassination on American soil of the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The plot went all the way to the top of the Quds Force, and involved hiring the services of a violent Mexican drug cartel to use explosives to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington. If that succeeded, it was to be followed by other terrorist jobs. There are lots of fascinating details, including such trivia as the use of a code-name, “Chevrolet,” for the assassination plot; and such monstrosities as Arbabsiar’s comment to a U.S. undercover source that his Iranian co-conspirators wanted the Saudi ambassador killed, and if 100 bystanders were killed as well, “f–k ‘em.”

Yet the criminal complaint also includes a caveat: “No attempt has been made to set forth the complete factual history of this investigation or all of its details.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY @ ROSETT REPORT @ PAJAMASMEDIA.COM

U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee reacts on FOXNEWS story on UNDP's assistance to Syrian Dictator (BASHAR)

House Foreign Affairs Committee

U.S. House of Representatives

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman

CONTACT: Brad Goehner and Andeliz Castillo, (202) 225-5021, April 29, 2011Alex Cruz (South Florida press), (202) 225-8200

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov

For IMMEDIATE Release

Ros-Lehtinen Warns of ‘Bucks for Bashar’ Scandal, Calls for End to UN Development Program Aid for Syria

(WASHINGTON) – U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, commented on the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) proposed 5-year, $38 million aid plan for Syria. Statement by Ros-Lehtinen:

“Given UNDP’s track record of mismanagement, malfeasance, and diversion of funds in Afghanistan, Burma, and North Korea, I am deeply concerned that UNDP assistance to Syria could end up benefitting the Syrian regime. We’ve already had the ‘Cash for Kim’ scandal in North Korea. This aid plan must be terminated to avoid any potential ‘Bucks for Bashar’ scandal in Syria.

“UNDP’s proposed aid package for Syria is premised on the false belief that the murderous dictatorship in Damascus can be a legitimate partner for democratic governance, economic growth, and development. The program proposal itself notes that UNDP will ‘continue to work closely with the government of Syria,’ even as the world witnesses the regime’s escalation of violence and repression against the Syrian people.

“Other UN agencies have also engaged in questionable dealings with the regime. For example, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency banks with the regime-controlled Commercial Bank of Syria, which has been designated under U.S. law for terror financing and money laundering.

“UNDP simply cannot be trusted to behave in a transparent, accountable manner, particularly when it operates in areas governed by rogue regimes. As such, U.S. taxpayer funds must not be contributed to UNDP.”

UN-Millionen für Nordkorea

UN-Millionen für Nordkorea
UNDP-Prüfbericht bestätigt schwere Unregelmäßigkeiten.

Pjöngjang/Genf. (rel) Mitarbeiter und Funktionäre des UN-Entwicklungsprogramms (UNDP) für Nordkorea sollen entgegen interner Richtlinien seit 1997 Güter und Hilfsgelder in Millionenhöhe direkt und ohne Kontrolle an das Regime in Pjöngjang geleistet haben. Dies geht aus einem 353 Seiten starken Untersuchungsbericht (External Independent Investigative Review Panel) der UN hervor, der Anfang Juni veröffentlicht wurde und heute, Dienstag, neuerlich in Genf beraten werden soll.
Wie das US-Nachrichtenportal Fox-News zitiert, habe das UNDP der Besetzung "heikler UN-Mitarbeiterposten" wie den des Finanzreferenten durch die nordkoreanische Regierung geduldet, obwohl Angehörigen eines "Empfangsstaates" die Ausübung von UN-Funktionen nicht gestattet ist.

Hinzu kommt, dass die Gehälter der nordkoreanischen UN-Mitarbeiter laut Fox-News "in harter Währung" und direkt an das Regime in Pjöngjang überwiesen worden sein sollen. Wofür das Geld aber verwendet wurde, konnte nie überprüft werden. Laut Untersuchungsbericht dürften mindestens 9,12 Millionen Dollar irregulär geflossen sein.

Das Entwicklungsprogramm der Vereinten Nationen steht aber nicht nur wegen zweifelhafter Personalentscheidungen und illegaler Überweisungen unter Beschuss. Die Autoren des Berichts wollen zudem wissen, dass auch so genannte "duale Güter", die sowohl für zivile als auch für terroristische Zwecke genutzt werden können, nach Nordkorea geliefert wurden. Neben Computern und Software soll das Regime Satelliten-Empfangsgeräte, Spektrometer und Messapparate erhalten haben.

Nach Auffliegen der Verstöße wurde das Programm 2005 beendet. Die Verantwortlichen wurden bisher gerichtlich nicht belangt.

US Government Statement on Review of UNDP's Operations in North Korea

USUN PRESS RELEASE # 143(08)
June 12, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Office of Press and Public Diplomacy
United States Mission to the United Nations
140 East 45th Street
New York, N.Y. 10017

U.S. Statement on the Report of the External Independent Investigative Review Panel: UN Development Program Activities in North Korea 1999-2007, June 12, 2008

http://www.usunnewyork.usmission.gov/press_releases/20080612_143.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The United States welcomes the Panel's Report and remains concerned by a number of its findings and the on-going need for corrective action. The United States has been working with UNDP management for over a year now to address systemic weaknesses through our UN Transparency and Accountability Initiative (UNTAI). In the coming months, we will follow up with UNDP management to address the Panel's findings and recommendations. We expect our collective effort to result in an appropriate transparency and accountability system for the organization that can help turn the page on this episode.

During the 1999-2007 period covered by the Panel's review, the United States provided over $1.5 billion to support UNDP and its activities worldwide. As one of the largest donors to UNDP and a member of its Executive Board, the United States has a responsibility to ensure the organization meets the standards of accountability and trust expected of public institutions. We must ensure that funding provided to UNDP is used in the most effective way possible and for its intended purpose -- to help the world's poor. In this spirit we offer the following observations.

The Report, which is voluminous, confirms many previous concerns raised by Member States and the findings of both the UN Board of Auditors (BOA) and the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) that there were broad management deficiencies across the entire UNDP/DPRK Country Program regarding payment modalities, staffing practices and project monitoring.

Specifically, we note that the Report confirms that payments were made in bearer instruments, such as cash or 'cash-checks.' As a result of this practice, this Report, like the previous BOA Report, was unable to determine whether check payments made by UNDP to persons and entities were received by the intended beneficiaries. In fact, the Report confirms that "core functions," such as Finance Officer, were performed by local North Korean personnel seconded from the DPRK government. The Report also confirms that UNDP project visits were circumscribed by the DPRK government through required advance "clearance or authorization." Further, the Report confirmed that there were broader management deficiencies relating to project monitoring and implementation across the entire UNDP DPRK Country Program.

As the U.S. Senate PSI Report indicated, these problems might have been addressed earlier had internal audits done by UNDP been made available to Members of the UNDP Executive Board. We therefore welcome the Panel's recommendation that UNDP make its internal audits available to Member States. We are working with UNDP and other Funds and Programs to ensure this becomes a normal practice across the UN system.

We note that the figures provided in the Report are inexact regarding the transfer of funds to the DPRK or DPRK-controlled entities by UNDP and by other UN agencies acting on UNDP's behalf. The figures cover a wide range of possible amounts. Nonetheless, the report does appear to confirm much larger figures than reported earlier by UNDP.

In reviewing available UNDP project budget documents, the Panel was unable to determine in 74% cases "whether the ultimate beneficiary is consistent with the payee name indicated in the financial system," reflecting lax fiduciary practices. Moreover, the Panel was unable to conclusively determine if diversion occurred.

The Panel noted that there is no evidence that UNDP officials knew that the DPRK government misused accounts that had been set up to receive UNDP funds to transfer North Korean monies abroad to avoid possible sanctions or to entities associated with secret weapons programs - nevertheless, we are deeply troubled by this misuse. The Report observes that UNDP did not sufficiently align its management controls to the "challenging environment" in which it found itself operating. Accordingly, the Report recommends "that an evaluation of UNDP-DPRK controls be performed" to strengthen these controls.

The Panel Report revealed an absence of understanding and required sensitivity to U.S. export control laws with respect to "dual use" items. As a result, a large number of sensitive items controlled by the U.S. for "national security and anti-terrorism reasons" were exported and/or retransferred by UNDP to North Korea without licenses.

The Panel noted that UNDP staff had long been aware of the use of counterfeit notes in North Korea. Previous UNDP staff in Pyongyang recognized that "counterfeiting was a significant issue at that time," and took measures to limit UNDP's vulnerability. However, "from the fall of 1999 to 2007, there was no apparent discussion among the Country Office staff about taking proactive measures." UNDP headquarters also ignored warning signs regarding counterfeit U.S. currency, which the U.S. Government brought to the attention of UNDP in the summer of 2006. The Panel noted that the head of UNDP Pyongyang office learned about the counterfeit U.S. currency stored in his office safe in October 2006, but waited until February 2007 to inform UNDP headquarters. The Panel also noted inconsistent accounts of this issue from the UNDP Comptroller.

Finally, the Report found that the whistleblower was justified in raising issues about UNDP's practices in the DPRK and that "he reported conduct and facts about UNDP operations in the DPRK that required resolution and may well have been in violation of UNDP policies as well as applicable agreements with the DPRK." It appears that the whistleblower did not have an opportunity to comment on the Panel's report before it was released.

UNDP PSO hides 87 contracts with terrorist organizations

UNDP's PSO is trying to make disappear from all systems 87 contracts with terrorist linked / affiliated companies.

The list contains :

- 8 UN-Blacklisted Terror List companies;
- 11 UN-Blacklisted Terror List individuals as owners of companies ;
- 35 US Treasury blacklisted companies and banks;
- 20 US Treasury blacklisted individuals as owners of companies;
- 13 US Treasury blacklisted individuals as owners or shareholders of banks doing business with UNDP;

UNDP OIST is cooperating in daily basis with Darshak Shah and julie Anne Mejia to ensure that the transactions that took place in with the above companies and/or banks and/or individuals are completely cleaned from UNDP's ATLAS and all related documentations.

UNDP is keeping the number of those involved in the process extremely low and those involved are controlled directly from OIST and their emails, hardware including their bags are all searched on the way in and out. No USB keys or phones with blutooth are allowed to enter the room were transaction is taking place. Meanwhile all those involved are under "P" long-term contracts.

Defensie betaalde kolonels bij VN illegaal

(Novum) - Het ministerie van Defensie heeft een salarisaanvulling voor twee Nederlandse kolonels werkzaam bij de Verenigde Naties stopgezet. Aanleiding is de affaire-Herfkens, waaruit naar voren kwam dat VN-medewerkers niet door derde partijen betaald mogen worden. Dat meldt een woordvoerder van Defensie vrijdag.

De kolonels zijn tijdelijk uit dienst bij Defensie en werken op het VN-hoofdkantoor in New York, als stafmedewerkers van secretaris-generaal Ban Ki-moon. Tot voor kort ontvingen ze van Defensie maandelijks elk enkele honderden euro's aanvullend op hun VN-salaris. Defensie gaf dat extraatje omdat de salarissen bij andere internationale organisaties als de NAVO hoger liggen. "We wilden dat gelijktrekken."

Defensie erkent de regels van de VN te hebben overtreden. Het ministerie heeft de vergoedingen ingetrokken, maar blijft ermee in zijn maag zitten. Defensie vreest dat Nederlanders wellicht in de toekomst niet meer voor een detachering bij de VN zullen kiezen als ze geen aanvulling krijgen op hun salaris. "Dan moet iemands keuze om bij de VN te gaan werken volledig gedragen worden door iemands motivatie. Mensen willen ook hun boterham kunnen betalen."

De twee kolonels hebben aangegeven ondanks hun verminderde inkomsten in New York te blijven. Wel voert Defensie nog gesprekken met beiden om eventueel op een andere manier compensatie te kunnen bieden. Of en hoe dit vorm gaat krijgen, kan de woordvoerder niet zeggen. Een optie is dat de twee worden gecompenseerd bij terugkomst, als ze weer in dienst van Defensie zijn, maar de woordvoerder weet niet of dit wettelijk mogelijk is.

Defensie sluit ook niet uit dat er voldoende officieren zullen zijn die genoegen nemen met een minder salaris en toch bij de VN gaan werken. De woordvoerder noemt het van belang dat Nederlanders werkzaam zijn bij de VN. Hij wijst op de verantwoordelijkheid als lidstaat en op de mogelijkheid invloed uit te oefenen.

Hoewel Defensie dezelfde regels heeft overtreden als Buitenlandse Zaken in de zaak-Herfkens, ziet Defensie ook grote verschillen. Zo zijn de bedragen die de kolonels ontvingen 'van een andere orde' dan de gage van Herfkens. Ook ging het bij de kolonels niet om huurtoeslag maar om een aanvulling op het inkomen.

Herfkens ontving van het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken 280 duizend dollar huursubsidie. Uit onderzoek van de VN-ontwikkelingsorganisatie UNDP, waar Herfkens werkzaam was, bleek deze week dat Herfkens de regels had ontvangen en ondertekend. Buitenlandse Zaken krijgt in het rapport kritiek omdat het de huursubsidie verstrekte. Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Maxime Verhagen (CDA) liet dinsdag weten het geld alsnog te willen terugvorderen, eventueel via een rechtsgang. Herfkens heeft te kennen gegeven het geld niet terug te betalen.

UNDP Procurement: A Shambles

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
By George Russell



The multibillion-dollar procurement business of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the U.N.’s flagship anti-poverty agency, is a gigantic shambles, according to UNDP’s own investigators.

Moreover, UNDP’s management has privately acknowledged that fact and is scrambling to fix the mess — even as it loudly denied concerns of a procurement scandal that have been raised by FOX News, among others.

In a confidential report obtained by FOX News, UNDP’s auditors have described the UNDP procurement organization that is spending well over $2 billion annually as:

— overwhelmed by its caseload at headquarters and in the field, while procurement ballooned from $800 million in 2003 to $2.5 billion in 2006 and $2.2 billion last year;

— often failing to provide plans to support its buying activities, which the report says causes many purchases of goods and services to be carried out on an "ad hoc basis" (in fact, more than $595 million worth of non-existent purchases were recorded, although the audit notes that they were not paid for);

— wallowing in shoddy paperwork and faulty bidding processes, which contributed to a "high number of waivers of the competitive process and to quality problems in the procurement process in general";

— lacking the expertise to evaluate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of its most expensive and important purchases in civic construction and high-tech communications;

— drastically unqualified: Fully half of the organization’s procurement staff around the world were not certified for the basic requirements of their jobs, while the auditors also found the six-hour course for those who were certified to be "inadequate." Initially, the auditors noted, "there are entire offices without a single certified buyer";

— suffering from an "apparent" conflict of interest at the top, where the people charged with vetting the procurement process for flaws are also members of the procurement office staff.

The same potentials for conflict of interest apparently dog local staffers, who, the report says, had not received official guidelines for disclosing their finances and interests, even though a policy demanding those declarations had been issued a year earlier.

Even more ominously, the same auditors point out that UNDP:

— has no sure way of knowing whether it is doing business with organizations that the U.N. itself has condemned for terrorist ties and says UNDP country offices find the current manual system of cross-checking with U.N. terrorist sanctions lists to be "cumbersome and inefficient";

— has no formal policy for suspending or removing vendors for poor performance or corruption;

— and doesn’t ask new vendors for the identity of their owners or other corporate ties. This raises the possibility that vendors caught out for corruption or poor performance could simply switch names and reapply for approved status.

The auditors also declare that at the time of their report, a staggering 260,000 vendors registered with UNDP were considered "inactive," meaning that the names existed, but the vendors were not seeking UNDP business — at least under those names.

Nor does UNDP policy, the auditors say, require detailed background checks on vendors unless "the contract amount is expected to exceed $1 million."

All of those observations, and many more almost as damning, are contained in a confidential draft audit report prepared by UNDP’s own Office of Audit and Investigations, or OAI, and embellished with comments by UNDP’s top management as of April 18. A redacted version of the draft report was obtained by FOX News.

Click here to see the draft audit.

According to its authors, the report contains some 21 "high priority" recommendations, where action is "imperative" and "failure to take action could result in major consequences and issues." All of these and other, less "imperative" recommendations were blacked out in the copy obtained by FOX News.

In several cases, where disagreement existed, it mainly appeared that top managers did not think UNDP could afford the changes or cited bureaucratic obstacles to full compliance.

The gaping holes and lack of competencies revealed by the report in the safeguards surrounding UNDP procurement have implications not only for the flagship anti-poverty agency but conceivably for many other U.N. agencies.

UNDP does business in 160 countries, where it designs all kinds of development programs in close collaboration with local governments, including a variety of radical dictatorships and many nations with abysmal corruption records.

UNDP has touted itself as a safeguard for the honesty and transparency of procurement exercises carried out on behalf of those governments — a view of UNDP probity and efficiency that the audit report essentially explodes.

Moreover, UNDP often conducts its procurement exercises to further the programs of other U.N. agencies among its far-flung constituencies, and the UNDP resident representative in each country is empowered as the U.N. secretary-general’s envoy.

UNDP is also taking the lead in an eight-country U.N. experiment known as "One U.N.," which will make the anti-poverty agency even more a conduit of all U.N. business in each nation, especially as "One U.N." rolls out further in the years ahead.

Among other things, the audit report gives grounds for questioning the wisdom of that process as it has been practiced.

The report includes a mini-digest of procurement cases with suspicious, unsatisfactory or unjustified results ranging from Ukraine ("the procurement process was unfair and non-transparent") to Colombia ("the soundness and effectiveness of the procurement process were questionable") to Somalia ("donor had requested a specific international company to be considered even though the solicitation process was local").

The importance of UNDP in the U.N. scheme of things and the controversy that has surrounded some of its recent actions are likely reasons for the apparent management scramble to meet its auditors’ concerns, especially as a key meeting of UNDP’s 36-nation supervisory executive board is scheduled to take place mid-June in Geneva.

On some issues examined in the report — notably, on the need to run background checks on vendors — management declares it will have a new system in place in June. Terrorist cross-checks, however, will take at least until July. So will the need to demonstrate planning along with "demonstrated capacity and performance," especially at the level of individual countries.

(Among other things, the audit report notes that some countries "have a rejection of 50 percent or more" on their first attempts at procurement submissions, while the overall rejection rates for Africa as a whole are "more than 40 percent.")

In April, UNDP took strong exception to a FOX News report that cited the development organization's own internal documents to show that over the past three years, UNDP had waived competitive bidding procedures for goods and services worth $879 million, roughly 58 percent of the total disbursed by UNDP headquarters during that time.

Some of the largest volumes of waivers went to countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where official corruption has reached shocking levels.

In its response to the FOX report, UNDP claimed that procurement during the three-year period was $6.96 billion and claimed that waivers of competition amounted to only 7 percent of the total. That percentage, however, amounted to a redefinition of the term "waiver of competitive bidding" as used on the UNDP documents obtained by FOX.

The same month, after FOX questioned the existence of a $2.3 million UNDP procurement of U.S.-made airport scanners on behalf of the radical Chavez government in Venezuela, UNDP posted a purchase order whose date and number did not match earlier documents that the agency had said were used to ship the equipment — three weeks before the later documents attested that the deal had been done.

International anti-corruption watchdogs rank Venezuela as being on the same level as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

UNDP practices in its client countries have been controversial since January 2007, when then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Mark Wallace raised questions about the agency’s use of cash payments to North Koreans who were employees of the Kim Jong-Il regime and who also occupied sensitive UNDP local posts. Subsequent investigation revealed that the Kim regime had also used UNDP bank accounts to funnel money to its nuclear weapons program.

UNDP subsequently fired a member of its staff who blew the whistle on the North Korean practices and declared it was not bound by U.N. rules when the U.N.'s newly appointed ethics officer declared he had found "prima facie evidence" of retaliation against the whistleblower. An ostensibly independent report on the whistleblower’s status, written by three panelists chosen by UNDP, is expected shortly.

How successful UNDP will be at fixing the mess described in the April draft audit report remains to be seen.

Among other things, top management agreed with the auditors that greater regional supervision of UNDP country procurement decisions is required. (The auditors suggested that for waivers of competition where "exigency for the requirement" is cited as justification, "the Regional Bureau concerned should be requested to confirm that there is indeed a ‘genuine exigency.’")

But management also said that the changes in supervision would not be implemented before the end of this year.

George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.

Staff of the UN express "No Confidence" on Secretary General and his team

By: Stewart Stogel Article Font Size

UNITED NATIONS -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in office only 16 months, faces a staff in revolt.

The personally affable and easygoing U.N. chief was stunned by a vote of no confidence taken by the U.N. Staff Union on late last week.

The union, representing more than 5,000 employees at the New York City headquarters, sent a letter on Friday to Ban explaining their action, a copy of which was obtained by NewsMax.

In it, Staff Union pPresident Stephen Kisambira complains about Ban's "lack of access" to the union leadership:

"We have sought to meet with you, since you assumed office, to discuss directly with you simmering issues of concern to staff. You have accorded us a couple of perfunctory meetings. You have not responded to a single letter or resolution we have sent you. The indifference and lack of appropriate response in the past pressed the staff to express a vote of no confidence in senior administration officials, including the secretary-general."

Kisambira laments that the relationship with the office of the secretary-general, already combative with Kofi Annan, has actually gotten worse since Ban assumed office on Jan. 1, 2007.

Among the items the union says Ban and his staff have chosen to ignore are costs of living adjustments, a U.N. "stimulus" package for USA-based staff similar to President Bush's tax refund (U.N. employees pay a staff assessment but no U.S. taxes) and the allocation of temporary office space while U.N. headquarters undergoes a 5-year renovation.

The issue of staff safety overseas was also an issue of concern.

Last December, U.N. offices in Algeria were attacked by al-Qaida, leaving 22 dead and 40 wounded. The Algeria attack, the worst in U.N. history, surpassed the 2003 bombing of the world body's Baghdad headquarters that left 17 dead.

The trend, according to the Staff Union, has resulted in alleged incompetence by senior management from the previous Annan administration being allowed to continue.

As an example, they point to the recent appointment of Angela Kane (Germany) to the post of Under Secretary-General for Management despite repeated charges of mismanagement in past U.N. posts and numerous subsequent investigations that have criticized her performance.

Senior U.N. officials have privately expressed their "doubts" over the Ban appointment.

Another example of mismanagement cited by the Union is the vulnerability of the U.N.'s computer system.

In its letter to Ban it is charged that the computer system is "vulnerable to unauthorized use and access, abuse and breach of confidentiality especially with regard to communication by e-mail."

Coincidentally, Ban's U.N. Web site was hacked in August 2007.

The Web site was off-line for almost a day with no explanation from the U.N. as to how the attack took place or who was responsible.

Unfortunately for Ban, many inside the U.N.'s diplomatic corps express similar "concerns" regarding the secretary-general's "performance."

"It is incredible. He (Ban) has been in office a year and a half and he still does not understand how the United Nations works," confessed a veteran U.N. diplomat.

U.S. diplomats have remained silent on the latest turn of events.

It is noteworthy that none of the U.N.'s permanent five members (U.S., U.K., Russia, China and France), the de-facto governing broad of the world body, have come to the defense of the secretary-general.

Ban's office had no comment.

UNDP's train on free fall .....!!!! While David Morrison continue to fake documents !!!

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.