UNDP Officials Said To Hamper Probe Into Counterfeit Cash
BY BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the SunJune 7, 2007URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/56061
UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Development Program employees say the agency's higher-ups used intimidation tactics to prevent them from talking to American authorities investigating potentially criminal activities in North Korea, where counterfeit American currency was used to pay foreigners.
Investigators for the U.S. attorney for New York's Southern District have sought to interview at least 22 UNDP officials with possible information about 35 counterfeit $100 bills that had been held in the agency's Pyongyang office for over a decade without informing American authorities.
An associate administrator for the UNDP, Ad Melkert, said yesterday that he has encouraged his employees to "tell what they know." But his legal department has advised the UNDP employees not to cooperate with American authorities unless supervised by U.N. lawyers who might then disclose the testimony to their superiors.
"We have encouraged everyone to cooperate fully and just to tell what they knew — internally in the organization, and externally to those that were inquiring," Mr. Melkert told The New York Sun yesterday during a press conference meant to highlight the new transparency and ethical measures being implemented by the agency.
But a senior legal advisor at the UNDP, Peri Lynne Johnson, had written a letter telling prospective witnesses in the fake currency case to "make yourself available for an interview with the United States authorities within the parameters that we have established with them." Those parameters, she wrote, were "that the interviews will take place in UNDP offices, with a representative from the UNDP legal office and the U.N. legal office present."
A source familiar with the investigation provided one of the letters to the Sun and said U.N. lawyers were obliged to disclose privileged information to the organization. The UNDP's conditions, therefore, meant information that might implicate senior UNDP officials could get back to them and lead to retaliation, which could include employment termination.
A UNDP report to the General Assembly last week disclosed new details in the case, including that the agency had known at least since 1996 that the Nigerian and Indonesian embassies in Pyongyang had received counterfeit payments from North Korean authorities. The UNDP had not reported the false payments until last week.
According to the UNDP report, the agency paid a consultant, Hazen el-Tanbouli, in December 1994 with a $3,500 bank voucher, which Pyongyang's Foreign Trade Bank later converted to cash. Mr. Tanbouli subsequently informed the UNDP that a bank in his homeland, Egypt, had returned the bills to him as counterfeit and had marked them to ensure that they would not be reused. In early 1996, a friend of Mr. Tanbouli, identified by the UNDP as Dr. Yehia Abu Alam, brought the bills to the UNDP's Pyongyang office, where they were put in a safe.
Several of the agency's Pyongyang office managers, according to the UNDP report, "attempted to address the issue for many years without success." Office employees "sought guidance" from headquarters and despite changes in management — including the tenure of a self-proclaimed reformer — a former UNDP administrator, Mark Malloch Brown — the matter remained unresolved.
Mr. Melkert said yesterday that he had only found out last February that the counterfeit bills were in the UNDP Pyongyang safe. Asked yesterday how it was that the current UNDP administrator, Kemal Dervis, had been unaware of the issue, Mr. Melkert said, "That is what we are now trying to find out."
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
UNDP Fails to publish Procurement Awards
United Nations Development Programme, a five billion dollars (tax-payers money) has failed continuously to produce evidence of its 2.5 billion a year procurements.
In its website (http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_awards.cfm) is impossible to get any data on cotract awards and modality of contracting.
Thousand of contracts are being awarded with no competitive bidding and proper procurement. a group of corrupt managers are helding hostage an entire organization.
Staff has repeteadly asked from Kemal Dervis and Ad Melkert to take actions, without any results.
Many say because Kemal and Ad are directly involved in contract "management" and "ensuring transparency".
Until when the public would have to allow these corrupt criminals to go on like this ?
If Ban Ki Moon is serious he should wave all immunities and allow the prosecutors around the world to investigate this Mafia Cove.
In its website (http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_awards.cfm) is impossible to get any data on cotract awards and modality of contracting.
Thousand of contracts are being awarded with no competitive bidding and proper procurement. a group of corrupt managers are helding hostage an entire organization.
Staff has repeteadly asked from Kemal Dervis and Ad Melkert to take actions, without any results.
Many say because Kemal and Ad are directly involved in contract "management" and "ensuring transparency".
Until when the public would have to allow these corrupt criminals to go on like this ?
If Ban Ki Moon is serious he should wave all immunities and allow the prosecutors around the world to investigate this Mafia Cove.
Ban Ki Moon to release immunity on Kemal Dervis: - investigated for his business affairs with Necati Yagci
Kemal Dervis prior to become the UNDP Administrator (United Nations Development Programme) , cooperated with a businessman named Necati Yagci in the field of constructions.
Dervis provided many construction projects to Yagci, namely the construction of many Embassies and Security buildings in many countries for US, World Bank, Israel etc.
Dervis and this famous businessman were doing jobs together in this way. Moreover, Yagci took many projects in Turkey as well, namely he got some public projects in order to build school buildings.
Dervis used an extra luxurious office and cars that belonged to Yagci. After the scandal was found out, they made a contract for the building, but it was obvious that it was too late for this.
The Ministry of Education of Turkey stated that an investigation has begun for Yagci and the projects he took over.
Now this mega-affair of Dervis with Yagci is getting to Ban Ki Moon's desk, facing very soon the request from Turkey prosecutors to take away the immunity of Kemal Dervis so he can testimony for his affairs (corrupted ) with Yagci.
Millions of dollars of tax-payers money from both World Bank and Turkey Government were "facilitated" from Dervis to Yagci.
Will Ban Ki Moon release the UN Immunity of Dervis ? to be continued.....
Links for this story:
- http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2002/08/14/siyaset/siy01.html
- http://www.milliyet.com/2002/08/13/siyaset/siy01.html
- http://www.yenisafak.com.tr/arsiv/2002/agustos/15/gundem.html
Dervis provided many construction projects to Yagci, namely the construction of many Embassies and Security buildings in many countries for US, World Bank, Israel etc.
Dervis and this famous businessman were doing jobs together in this way. Moreover, Yagci took many projects in Turkey as well, namely he got some public projects in order to build school buildings.
Dervis used an extra luxurious office and cars that belonged to Yagci. After the scandal was found out, they made a contract for the building, but it was obvious that it was too late for this.
The Ministry of Education of Turkey stated that an investigation has begun for Yagci and the projects he took over.
Now this mega-affair of Dervis with Yagci is getting to Ban Ki Moon's desk, facing very soon the request from Turkey prosecutors to take away the immunity of Kemal Dervis so he can testimony for his affairs (corrupted ) with Yagci.
Millions of dollars of tax-payers money from both World Bank and Turkey Government were "facilitated" from Dervis to Yagci.
Will Ban Ki Moon release the UN Immunity of Dervis ? to be continued.....
Links for this story:
- http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2002/08/14/siyaset/siy01.html
- http://www.milliyet.com/2002/08/13/siyaset/siy01.html
- http://www.yenisafak.com.tr/arsiv/2002/agustos/15/gundem.html
Under U.N. Chief, Koreans in Key Posts (Ban Ki-moon Denies Playing Favorites)
Under U.N. Chief, Koreans in Key Posts
Ban Ki-moon Denies Playing Favorites
By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 21, 2007; Page A20
UNITED NATIONS -- South Korea's former ambassador to the United Nations, Choi Young-jin, will travel to Ivory Coast in the coming weeks to run the world body's peacekeeping efforts, making him the first South Korean diplomat to lead a major U.N. mission in Africa, and the latest compatriot tapped for a significant position by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The appointments have signaled South Korea's emergence as a rising power on the international diplomatic stage. But they have also fueled resentment among some U.N. employees and delegates who feel that Ban -- who became secretary general in January after serving as South Korea's minister of foreign affairs and trade -- is advancing the interests of his home government, which invested financially and politically in Ban's rise to the top.
"There is talk about Korean omnipresence in the [U.N.] secretariat," said Samir Sanbar, a retired Lebanese national who served as a high-ranking U.N. official for decades. "The impression is that Koreans are taking the decisions."
Ban and his aides said allegations of favoritism are wrong, and that some of the harshest criticisms smack of racism. He said that the South Korean nationals he has appointed -- including Choi, who has served as a high-ranking official in the United Nation's peacekeeping department -- are highly qualified for their positions.
"This is just unfair, just unfair, just unfair," Ban said in an interview last month, noting that South Korean nationals have been historically underrepresented at the United Nations. "I have intentionally, deliberately tried to distance myself from Korea. You may agree or not agree, but I have been troubled by the perception . . . that I have been relying too much on Koreans."
The South Korean government played a key role in promoting Ban's ascent to his job as secretary general, and the South Korean mission to the United Nations has advocated Ban's favored causes, including proposed reforms for the U.N. peacekeeping and disarmament departments. Ban, meanwhile, has used his perch to prod South Korea -- long in financial arrears -- to pay its bills on time and to lend attack helicopters for a peacekeeping mission in
The hiring of nationals from one's own country is a delicate subject at the United Nations. The U.N. Charter requires that officials take no instructions from their governments. But, like Ban, many top U.N. officials owe their jobs to support from their governments, and they sometimes remain involved in their country's political life.
Previous U.N. chiefs -- including Kurt Waldheim of Austria, Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru and Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt -- brought small teams of trusted aides or clerical workers from their country's Foreign Ministry. But some officials say that Ban has gone further, contributing to boosting South Korea's presence in U.N. ranks by more than 20 percent in the past year.
"Perez de Cuellar recruited one Peruvian: That was me. I was his special assistant," said ¿lvaro de Soto, a former Peruvian diplomat who was given strict instructions to rebuff Peruvian job-seekers.
South Korea joined the United Nations in 1991, and it had been slow to make its presence felt. U.N. records show that South Korea, the organization's eleventh-largest financial contributor, had 54 South Korean nationals assigned to its mission six months before Ban took over the top U.N. post. By contrast, the Philippines, a much poorer country, had 759 nationals in its mission.
But South Korean membership has risen rapidly during Ban's brief tenure, to 66 staff members. Ban's most important appointment in the past year was that of Kim Won-soo, a former South Korean official who helped run Ban's election campaign for the top U.N. post. Kim is widely viewed as the second most influential U.N. official, overseeing staff appointments and helping craft Ban's political priorities.
Ban has also appointed his onetime boss, Han Seung-soo, a former South Korean foreign minister and U.N. General Assembly president, to a senior panel on climate change. Other prominent South Koreans have secured positions in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Department of Information Technology.
A handful of mid-level South Korean nationals recruited from the South Korean Foreign Ministry -- and spared from competing for their jobs -- have been posted in Ban's executive office, press office and department of management. Some U.N. officials have referred to the South Koreans as Ban's "political commissars" or "embeds," saying that they undermine the U.N. chain of command.
Others said the complaints are driven by envy. "I think being from South Korea, and people have growing respect for South Korea, that's a great enhancement for the secretary general," said Donald P. Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea. "If he brings along talented people who he knows very well, I think that's also a plus."
Ban Ki-moon Denies Playing Favorites
By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 21, 2007; Page A20
UNITED NATIONS -- South Korea's former ambassador to the United Nations, Choi Young-jin, will travel to Ivory Coast in the coming weeks to run the world body's peacekeeping efforts, making him the first South Korean diplomat to lead a major U.N. mission in Africa, and the latest compatriot tapped for a significant position by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The appointments have signaled South Korea's emergence as a rising power on the international diplomatic stage. But they have also fueled resentment among some U.N. employees and delegates who feel that Ban -- who became secretary general in January after serving as South Korea's minister of foreign affairs and trade -- is advancing the interests of his home government, which invested financially and politically in Ban's rise to the top.
"There is talk about Korean omnipresence in the [U.N.] secretariat," said Samir Sanbar, a retired Lebanese national who served as a high-ranking U.N. official for decades. "The impression is that Koreans are taking the decisions."
Ban and his aides said allegations of favoritism are wrong, and that some of the harshest criticisms smack of racism. He said that the South Korean nationals he has appointed -- including Choi, who has served as a high-ranking official in the United Nation's peacekeeping department -- are highly qualified for their positions.
"This is just unfair, just unfair, just unfair," Ban said in an interview last month, noting that South Korean nationals have been historically underrepresented at the United Nations. "I have intentionally, deliberately tried to distance myself from Korea. You may agree or not agree, but I have been troubled by the perception . . . that I have been relying too much on Koreans."
The South Korean government played a key role in promoting Ban's ascent to his job as secretary general, and the South Korean mission to the United Nations has advocated Ban's favored causes, including proposed reforms for the U.N. peacekeeping and disarmament departments. Ban, meanwhile, has used his perch to prod South Korea -- long in financial arrears -- to pay its bills on time and to lend attack helicopters for a peacekeeping mission in
The hiring of nationals from one's own country is a delicate subject at the United Nations. The U.N. Charter requires that officials take no instructions from their governments. But, like Ban, many top U.N. officials owe their jobs to support from their governments, and they sometimes remain involved in their country's political life.
Previous U.N. chiefs -- including Kurt Waldheim of Austria, Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru and Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt -- brought small teams of trusted aides or clerical workers from their country's Foreign Ministry. But some officials say that Ban has gone further, contributing to boosting South Korea's presence in U.N. ranks by more than 20 percent in the past year.
"Perez de Cuellar recruited one Peruvian: That was me. I was his special assistant," said ¿lvaro de Soto, a former Peruvian diplomat who was given strict instructions to rebuff Peruvian job-seekers.
South Korea joined the United Nations in 1991, and it had been slow to make its presence felt. U.N. records show that South Korea, the organization's eleventh-largest financial contributor, had 54 South Korean nationals assigned to its mission six months before Ban took over the top U.N. post. By contrast, the Philippines, a much poorer country, had 759 nationals in its mission.
But South Korean membership has risen rapidly during Ban's brief tenure, to 66 staff members. Ban's most important appointment in the past year was that of Kim Won-soo, a former South Korean official who helped run Ban's election campaign for the top U.N. post. Kim is widely viewed as the second most influential U.N. official, overseeing staff appointments and helping craft Ban's political priorities.
Ban has also appointed his onetime boss, Han Seung-soo, a former South Korean foreign minister and U.N. General Assembly president, to a senior panel on climate change. Other prominent South Koreans have secured positions in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Department of Information Technology.
A handful of mid-level South Korean nationals recruited from the South Korean Foreign Ministry -- and spared from competing for their jobs -- have been posted in Ban's executive office, press office and department of management. Some U.N. officials have referred to the South Koreans as Ban's "political commissars" or "embeds," saying that they undermine the U.N. chain of command.
Others said the complaints are driven by envy. "I think being from South Korea, and people have growing respect for South Korea, that's a great enhancement for the secretary general," said Donald P. Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea. "If he brings along talented people who he knows very well, I think that's also a plus."
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) to clean up their servers in lieu of the new investigation on Syria
UN Development Program No-Bid Contracts for Computer Clean Up on Eve of Accountability Seminar
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press:Interim News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, November 19 -- On the eve of a UN event on "accountability," the UN Development Program has hired on a non-bid basis a contractor to clean up its computer systems to remove, rather than promote, accountability, according to UNDP insiders.
On Tuesday UNDP's Darshak Shah, who oversaw the agency's since disbanded program in North Korea but still remains controller, will discuss accountability with, among others, the UN Ethics Officer Robert Benson, on whose watch UNDP whistleblowers have been left unprotected.
On Monday in New York, two contractors from Indentix, Jim Yang and Paul Bedi, paid $7000 per 40 hours worked, began on UNDP's servers the "Reconciliation of several Identity Stores." Among the goals is it "protect the identity and privacy of UNDP users as they work and collaborate with colleagues and partners outside UNDP."
The justification for "sole source," no-bid contracting is stated as follows:
- "There is no competitive market-place for the requirement, such as where a monopoly exists, where prices are fixed by legislation or government regulation, or where the requirement involves a proprietary product or service... ICT Security and Governance Unit seeking a waiver of competitive bidding for this submission, based on following criteria: Velo is unique open-source implementation of User Provisioning system on the market; Identyx Inc. is the only commercial company that is subject matter expert in Velo product allowing us to perform integration tasks quickly."
But if UNDP's reason for choosing Velo software was that it's open source, how can there be only one contractor expert in it? Insiders say the choice was made by UNDP's Stephen G. Fridakis. The no-bid contract was approved by Ali Al-Za'tari, until recently UNDP's resident representative in Syria.
The timing of this computer clean up has caught of the eye of government authorities looking into UNDP's irregularities, and the matter is expected to be raised to the independent expert chosen by Administrator Kemal Dervis, Miklos Nemeth.
Meanwhile in the void opened by the blocking of the UN Ethics Office's whistleblower inquiry, UNDP has rushed to appointed its own ethics officer, 30-year UNDP insider Karunesh Bhalla. It's "One UN," it seems, except when it comes to Ethics. At Tuesday seminar hosted by UN University -- which has its own issues -- maybe some answers will be given. Developing.
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press:Interim News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, November 19 -- On the eve of a UN event on "accountability," the UN Development Program has hired on a non-bid basis a contractor to clean up its computer systems to remove, rather than promote, accountability, according to UNDP insiders.
On Tuesday UNDP's Darshak Shah, who oversaw the agency's since disbanded program in North Korea but still remains controller, will discuss accountability with, among others, the UN Ethics Officer Robert Benson, on whose watch UNDP whistleblowers have been left unprotected.
On Monday in New York, two contractors from Indentix, Jim Yang and Paul Bedi, paid $7000 per 40 hours worked, began on UNDP's servers the "Reconciliation of several Identity Stores." Among the goals is it "protect the identity and privacy of UNDP users as they work and collaborate with colleagues and partners outside UNDP."
The justification for "sole source," no-bid contracting is stated as follows:
- "There is no competitive market-place for the requirement, such as where a monopoly exists, where prices are fixed by legislation or government regulation, or where the requirement involves a proprietary product or service... ICT Security and Governance Unit seeking a waiver of competitive bidding for this submission, based on following criteria: Velo is unique open-source implementation of User Provisioning system on the market; Identyx Inc. is the only commercial company that is subject matter expert in Velo product allowing us to perform integration tasks quickly."
But if UNDP's reason for choosing Velo software was that it's open source, how can there be only one contractor expert in it? Insiders say the choice was made by UNDP's Stephen G. Fridakis. The no-bid contract was approved by Ali Al-Za'tari, until recently UNDP's resident representative in Syria.
The timing of this computer clean up has caught of the eye of government authorities looking into UNDP's irregularities, and the matter is expected to be raised to the independent expert chosen by Administrator Kemal Dervis, Miklos Nemeth.
Meanwhile in the void opened by the blocking of the UN Ethics Office's whistleblower inquiry, UNDP has rushed to appointed its own ethics officer, 30-year UNDP insider Karunesh Bhalla. It's "One UN," it seems, except when it comes to Ethics. At Tuesday seminar hosted by UN University -- which has its own issues -- maybe some answers will be given. Developing.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Hermit Tyranny Makes Rare P.R. Move
Hermit Tyranny Makes Rare P.R. Move
By BENNY AVNI
Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 3, 2007
UNITED NATIONS — In a rare public relations effort, the North Korean foreign minister, Choe Su-Hon, yesterday invited a group of hand-picked reporters for a chat after he addressed the U.N. General Assembly.
At the 13th-floor offices of North Korea's U.N. mission, Mr. Choe railed against America and Japan, boasted that his country initiated the Korean Peninsula's new thaw, and dismissed international aid to his cash-strapped communist regime as nothing but a "small amount of money." Pyongyang will refuse entry to any auditors the U.N. Development Program sends to investigate allegations of rules violations in the agency's North Korean program, he said.
A polite, smiling official who introduced himself as Song kept the doors of the North Korean offices closed to most reporters. He said little beyond disclosing that he learned English at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Languages and that he started smoking Danish cigarettes when he began working for the foreign office. He rebuffed further inquiries into the brand of cigarettes most of his fellow countrymen smoke. "I can't talk to you anymore," he told The New York Sun.
The reporters allowed to "interview" Mr. Choe at the mission, according to the official, were invitees from three press agencies: Xinhua of China, Itar-Tass of Russia, and the German press agency DPA, whose correspondent Tuyet Nguyen is the president of the U.N. Correspondents Association. A recording of Mr. Choe's interview was made available to the Sun and others.
In it Mr. Choe called on Japan to apologize and compensate North Korea for its "hooliganism and robbery" during "42 years of occupation," and he accused Japan's armed forces of shifting the current military balance in East Asia. Since 1945, he added, America has conducted a "hostile policy" toward Pyongyang. Once America ends the military threat it poses to North Korea, Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament will be "solved," he said.
Mr. Choe said the UNDP auditors, recently appointed to investigate allegations of violations of the agency's rules in its Pyongyang office, would not be allowed into his country. A preliminary audit concluded that UNDP violations indeed occurred — including hiring of employees who also worked for the North Korean government and payments in foreign currency. But Mr. Choe said yesterday that the initial findings "prove" that the allegations, first made by American diplomats, were "groundless."
"Our dignity and integrity has been hurt," he said, and dispatching a new team of auditors would further "offend our dignity."
The United Nations does not need to send more auditors, he said, because "the amount of money" in the UNDP North Korean program "was so small." The UNDP estimated the size of its North Korean program at $3 million a year, but other published reports claimed it has reached upward of $100 million since 1998. "We don't care about such a small amount of money," Mr. Choe said.
"We think it is in everyone's interest for the auditors to visit North Korea," a UNDP spokeswoman, Christina LoNigro, told the Sun. "However, if the auditors are not given visas, we will bring our documents out of the country and make them available to the auditors elsewhere."
A U.N. spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said Mr. Choe and Secretary-General Ban, who met here yesterday, discussed Korean diplomacy. The issue of visas for the UNDP auditors was not raised at the meeting, she said.
By BENNY AVNI
Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 3, 2007
UNITED NATIONS — In a rare public relations effort, the North Korean foreign minister, Choe Su-Hon, yesterday invited a group of hand-picked reporters for a chat after he addressed the U.N. General Assembly.
At the 13th-floor offices of North Korea's U.N. mission, Mr. Choe railed against America and Japan, boasted that his country initiated the Korean Peninsula's new thaw, and dismissed international aid to his cash-strapped communist regime as nothing but a "small amount of money." Pyongyang will refuse entry to any auditors the U.N. Development Program sends to investigate allegations of rules violations in the agency's North Korean program, he said.
A polite, smiling official who introduced himself as Song kept the doors of the North Korean offices closed to most reporters. He said little beyond disclosing that he learned English at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Languages and that he started smoking Danish cigarettes when he began working for the foreign office. He rebuffed further inquiries into the brand of cigarettes most of his fellow countrymen smoke. "I can't talk to you anymore," he told The New York Sun.
The reporters allowed to "interview" Mr. Choe at the mission, according to the official, were invitees from three press agencies: Xinhua of China, Itar-Tass of Russia, and the German press agency DPA, whose correspondent Tuyet Nguyen is the president of the U.N. Correspondents Association. A recording of Mr. Choe's interview was made available to the Sun and others.
In it Mr. Choe called on Japan to apologize and compensate North Korea for its "hooliganism and robbery" during "42 years of occupation," and he accused Japan's armed forces of shifting the current military balance in East Asia. Since 1945, he added, America has conducted a "hostile policy" toward Pyongyang. Once America ends the military threat it poses to North Korea, Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament will be "solved," he said.
Mr. Choe said the UNDP auditors, recently appointed to investigate allegations of violations of the agency's rules in its Pyongyang office, would not be allowed into his country. A preliminary audit concluded that UNDP violations indeed occurred — including hiring of employees who also worked for the North Korean government and payments in foreign currency. But Mr. Choe said yesterday that the initial findings "prove" that the allegations, first made by American diplomats, were "groundless."
"Our dignity and integrity has been hurt," he said, and dispatching a new team of auditors would further "offend our dignity."
The United Nations does not need to send more auditors, he said, because "the amount of money" in the UNDP North Korean program "was so small." The UNDP estimated the size of its North Korean program at $3 million a year, but other published reports claimed it has reached upward of $100 million since 1998. "We don't care about such a small amount of money," Mr. Choe said.
"We think it is in everyone's interest for the auditors to visit North Korea," a UNDP spokeswoman, Christina LoNigro, told the Sun. "However, if the auditors are not given visas, we will bring our documents out of the country and make them available to the auditors elsewhere."
A U.N. spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said Mr. Choe and Secretary-General Ban, who met here yesterday, discussed Korean diplomacy. The issue of visas for the UNDP auditors was not raised at the meeting, she said.
U.N.'s Reading List for N. Korea
U.N.'s Reading List for N. Korea
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT - Special to the Sun
May 25, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/55218
Not only has the United Nations been caught funneling cash to the rogue regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il, but it's now emerging that the U.N. Development Program was ordering up books critical of America and President Bush for North Korean arms experts in Pyongyang, and accepted a shipment on March 14, almost two weeks after the UNDP announced that it was suspending operations in North Korea.
The UNDP-sponsored reading list for North Korean officialdom includes such titles as "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End," and "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration."
These are among the 29 volumes that appear on a packing list, seen by this reporter, for books ordered on behalf of the North Korean government by the UNDP. Some are more focused on arms deals, or on regional powers, and all can be purchased on the open market. But that raises a number of questions. For starters, why was the UNDP, a development agency, in the business of designing and funding an arms-negotiation syllabus for North Korea?
Another question involves the sky-high price of the shipment. According to the packing list, the books were assembled and forwarded to Pyongyang by the Beijing office of a Belgian-based company, Elsingor S.A., which describes itself on its Web site as a provider of products for "green energy." For its services, including book purchases and freight fees, Elsingor charged the UNDP $2,978.78, or roughly $100 a book. A search on Amazon finds the same list of books can be purchased online, new, for a total of $826.24 — which suggests that freight fees to get this 40-lb. carton of books into North Korea (for the use of the North Korean government, no less), came to more than $2,000.
Reached by phone in Beijing, an Elsingor office worker with a French accent, who refused to give his full name, said his company does a lot of business with foreigners working in North Korea, including shipments for the European Union and fertilizer deals with the United Nations's World Food Program. He says the book shipment was part of "helping all those guys."
Yet another set of questions involves why the books were shipped out on March 9, and accepted March 14, after the UNDP had announced it was suspending operations in Pyongyang? Were they then turned over to the North Korean government, along with the $2 million or so worth of "project assets" that The New York Sun's Benny Avni reported last month had been left with North Korea by the retreating UNDP? The UNDP rationale for handing piles of property to Kim was that the assets were already in North Korea's possession. But these books arrived during the period for which the UNDP spokesman's office in New York has said, "Nothing new has been ‘given' or transferred to the DPRK authorities."
Queried by e-mail about these matters, the former UNDP resident representative in Pyongyang to whom the shipment was addressed, Timo Pakkala, refers the question to the UNDP press office in New York. There, a spokesman says they are operating "under certain constraints." These include a "pending audit" — which is now more than a month overdue, following Secretary-General Ban's promise in response to "Cash for Kim" of a report in 90 days.
The books were ordered under a "disarmament" project run in recent years out of the UNDP's Pyongyang office, as part of an initiative bankrolled in 2002 by the German government and later by Sweden. This project was meant to produce a more tractable North Korean regime by exposing Pyongyang officials to European ideas about arms control. But details eked out of the UNDP recently leave the question of whether this exercise might have served as a bonanza of free intelligence for North Korea, laced with views highly critical of American policy — all done in the name of "development," courtesy of the UNDP.
Under the project label of "Capacity Building in Arms Control and Disarmament," the UNDP served as sponsor, banker, and fixer for North Korean arms experts to visit Europe and Britain on fellowships and "study tours," including stops at security think tanks in Sweden, Germany, and Britain; meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels and at the General Staff College of the German Armed Forces; and meetings with assorted diplomats at U.N. missions in Geneva.
The North Korean officials who went on these UNDP tours were selected via the DPRK Institute for Disarmament and Peace, a Pyongyang policy shop at the core of the arms negotiations that North Korea has used for years to manipulate, threaten, cheat, and extort concessions such as aid and fuel from countries including America. In a project document, provided by the UNDP, this institute is described in language straight out of the propaganda mills of Kim Jong Il as an outfit dedicated to "achieving disarmament and peace on the Korean peninsula, strengthening peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region," and "preventing war."
North Korean officials continued their study tours, and the UNDP continued ordering books for Pyongyang, even after North Korea's illicit and widely condemned tests last year of an intercontinental missile and, it claimed, a nuclear bomb.
Ms. Rosett is a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT - Special to the Sun
May 25, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/55218
Not only has the United Nations been caught funneling cash to the rogue regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il, but it's now emerging that the U.N. Development Program was ordering up books critical of America and President Bush for North Korean arms experts in Pyongyang, and accepted a shipment on March 14, almost two weeks after the UNDP announced that it was suspending operations in North Korea.
The UNDP-sponsored reading list for North Korean officialdom includes such titles as "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End," and "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration."
These are among the 29 volumes that appear on a packing list, seen by this reporter, for books ordered on behalf of the North Korean government by the UNDP. Some are more focused on arms deals, or on regional powers, and all can be purchased on the open market. But that raises a number of questions. For starters, why was the UNDP, a development agency, in the business of designing and funding an arms-negotiation syllabus for North Korea?
Another question involves the sky-high price of the shipment. According to the packing list, the books were assembled and forwarded to Pyongyang by the Beijing office of a Belgian-based company, Elsingor S.A., which describes itself on its Web site as a provider of products for "green energy." For its services, including book purchases and freight fees, Elsingor charged the UNDP $2,978.78, or roughly $100 a book. A search on Amazon finds the same list of books can be purchased online, new, for a total of $826.24 — which suggests that freight fees to get this 40-lb. carton of books into North Korea (for the use of the North Korean government, no less), came to more than $2,000.
Reached by phone in Beijing, an Elsingor office worker with a French accent, who refused to give his full name, said his company does a lot of business with foreigners working in North Korea, including shipments for the European Union and fertilizer deals with the United Nations's World Food Program. He says the book shipment was part of "helping all those guys."
Yet another set of questions involves why the books were shipped out on March 9, and accepted March 14, after the UNDP had announced it was suspending operations in Pyongyang? Were they then turned over to the North Korean government, along with the $2 million or so worth of "project assets" that The New York Sun's Benny Avni reported last month had been left with North Korea by the retreating UNDP? The UNDP rationale for handing piles of property to Kim was that the assets were already in North Korea's possession. But these books arrived during the period for which the UNDP spokesman's office in New York has said, "Nothing new has been ‘given' or transferred to the DPRK authorities."
Queried by e-mail about these matters, the former UNDP resident representative in Pyongyang to whom the shipment was addressed, Timo Pakkala, refers the question to the UNDP press office in New York. There, a spokesman says they are operating "under certain constraints." These include a "pending audit" — which is now more than a month overdue, following Secretary-General Ban's promise in response to "Cash for Kim" of a report in 90 days.
The books were ordered under a "disarmament" project run in recent years out of the UNDP's Pyongyang office, as part of an initiative bankrolled in 2002 by the German government and later by Sweden. This project was meant to produce a more tractable North Korean regime by exposing Pyongyang officials to European ideas about arms control. But details eked out of the UNDP recently leave the question of whether this exercise might have served as a bonanza of free intelligence for North Korea, laced with views highly critical of American policy — all done in the name of "development," courtesy of the UNDP.
Under the project label of "Capacity Building in Arms Control and Disarmament," the UNDP served as sponsor, banker, and fixer for North Korean arms experts to visit Europe and Britain on fellowships and "study tours," including stops at security think tanks in Sweden, Germany, and Britain; meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels and at the General Staff College of the German Armed Forces; and meetings with assorted diplomats at U.N. missions in Geneva.
The North Korean officials who went on these UNDP tours were selected via the DPRK Institute for Disarmament and Peace, a Pyongyang policy shop at the core of the arms negotiations that North Korea has used for years to manipulate, threaten, cheat, and extort concessions such as aid and fuel from countries including America. In a project document, provided by the UNDP, this institute is described in language straight out of the propaganda mills of Kim Jong Il as an outfit dedicated to "achieving disarmament and peace on the Korean peninsula, strengthening peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region," and "preventing war."
North Korean officials continued their study tours, and the UNDP continued ordering books for Pyongyang, even after North Korea's illicit and widely condemned tests last year of an intercontinental missile and, it claimed, a nuclear bomb.
Ms. Rosett is a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
U.S. Alleges North Korea Is Misusing Aid for Poor
U.S. Alleges North Korea Is Misusing Aid for Poor
Probe Says U.N. Money Was Spent on Property Overseas
By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch
Washington Post
June 9, 2007
About $3 million in United Nations money intended to help impoverished North Koreans was diverted by the Pyongyang government toward the purchase of property in France, the United Kingdom and Canada, according to a confidential State Department account of witness reports and internal business records. Millions more, the department reported, went to a North Korean institution linked to a bank alleged to handle arms deals.
The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in North Korea spent about $3 million a year over the past decade to promote the country's economic growth, foreign trade and investment. It halted operations in March after the United States alleged that the agency engaged in improper hiring and financial practices. A preliminary U.N. audit, released last week, confirmed that it violated its own guidelines by hiring local workers who were selected by the North Korean government and paying them in foreign currency.
A separate State Department investigation suggests that some of the agency's money enriched the North Korean government. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, presented UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis with new allegations regarding the North Korea programs Wednesday, a UNDP spokesman confirmed.
"At first glance, the allegations do not correspond with our own records, which we have scrutinized extremely closely in the past six months," spokesman David Morrison said.
The U.S. probe, headed by Mark Wallace, a deputy ambassador, also found that the UNDP procured for North Korea equipment that could be used in a weapons program. Such "dual use" equipment included global-positioning system equipment, computers and computer accessories, and a device known as a mass spectrometer, used to determine the isotopic composition of elements.
Morrison said the UNDP purchased the computers, GPS equipment and spectrometer to enable the forecasting of weather patterns in flood- and drought-prone areas of the country. He noted that the 10 GPS devices cost $65,000 and the mass spectrometer cost $6,000.
"UNDP takes these allegations very seriously and has asked the U.S. Mission to provide all available documentation to substantiate the allegations and to facilitate UNDP's own immediate review of them," Morrison said.
Ric Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said the information presented to Dervis "indicates an apparent misuse and diversion of UNDP funds, business dealings with certain suspect entities affiliated with [North Korea], UNDP's procurement of potential dual-use equipment and information related to the further use of counterfeit U.S. currency in" North Korea. He said Dervis indicated that he is "committed to investigating the matter" and providing answers.
The State Department has not made public any documents to back up its interpretation, and Khalilzad has declined to release details of the department's investigation. Some congressional staff members have received confidential briefings on the findings.
The revelations come at a sensitive moment, as the Bush administration has been working closely with other countries, particularly Russia, to arrange a transfer of $24 million in tainted North Korean money to facilitate an agreement to shut down North Korea's nuclear reactor.
The U.S. probe discovered that the UNDP purchased for the North Korean government 29 books for an arms control and disarmament project, including one titled "The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation." Morrison said the books were purchased in December and delivered last month. "In hindsight, better judgment could have been used in the selection and delivery of these books," he said.
Probe Says U.N. Money Was Spent on Property Overseas
By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch
Washington Post
June 9, 2007
About $3 million in United Nations money intended to help impoverished North Koreans was diverted by the Pyongyang government toward the purchase of property in France, the United Kingdom and Canada, according to a confidential State Department account of witness reports and internal business records. Millions more, the department reported, went to a North Korean institution linked to a bank alleged to handle arms deals.
The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in North Korea spent about $3 million a year over the past decade to promote the country's economic growth, foreign trade and investment. It halted operations in March after the United States alleged that the agency engaged in improper hiring and financial practices. A preliminary U.N. audit, released last week, confirmed that it violated its own guidelines by hiring local workers who were selected by the North Korean government and paying them in foreign currency.
A separate State Department investigation suggests that some of the agency's money enriched the North Korean government. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, presented UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis with new allegations regarding the North Korea programs Wednesday, a UNDP spokesman confirmed.
"At first glance, the allegations do not correspond with our own records, which we have scrutinized extremely closely in the past six months," spokesman David Morrison said.
The U.S. probe, headed by Mark Wallace, a deputy ambassador, also found that the UNDP procured for North Korea equipment that could be used in a weapons program. Such "dual use" equipment included global-positioning system equipment, computers and computer accessories, and a device known as a mass spectrometer, used to determine the isotopic composition of elements.
Morrison said the UNDP purchased the computers, GPS equipment and spectrometer to enable the forecasting of weather patterns in flood- and drought-prone areas of the country. He noted that the 10 GPS devices cost $65,000 and the mass spectrometer cost $6,000.
"UNDP takes these allegations very seriously and has asked the U.S. Mission to provide all available documentation to substantiate the allegations and to facilitate UNDP's own immediate review of them," Morrison said.
Ric Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said the information presented to Dervis "indicates an apparent misuse and diversion of UNDP funds, business dealings with certain suspect entities affiliated with [North Korea], UNDP's procurement of potential dual-use equipment and information related to the further use of counterfeit U.S. currency in" North Korea. He said Dervis indicated that he is "committed to investigating the matter" and providing answers.
The State Department has not made public any documents to back up its interpretation, and Khalilzad has declined to release details of the department's investigation. Some congressional staff members have received confidential briefings on the findings.
The revelations come at a sensitive moment, as the Bush administration has been working closely with other countries, particularly Russia, to arrange a transfer of $24 million in tainted North Korean money to facilitate an agreement to shut down North Korea's nuclear reactor.
The U.S. probe discovered that the UNDP purchased for the North Korean government 29 books for an arms control and disarmament project, including one titled "The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation." Morrison said the books were purchased in December and delivered last month. "In hindsight, better judgment could have been used in the selection and delivery of these books," he said.
US Government is investigating who is the "mole" of Kemal Dervis inside Commerce and State Dept !!!
Thanks to a FOX NEWS Investigation, the United States Government is looking into its own internal files to determine who is the "mole", inside Commerce and State Departments, who is being paid from UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) to procure Export Licences for Syria and other countries, which have received high-techs despite the embargo.
This report shows that UNDP and United Nations, by continuing its alliance with dictators and rogue regimes, despite the hudreds of millions of dollars received from the United States, have turned themselves into clandestine agencies providing coverage for international terrorist.
The US should suspend its funding to such organizations, and should strengthen its controls into the United Nations by ensuring that the US taxpayers money is used for what is intended and not be diverted.
FOXNEWS.COM HOME > WORLD
Three U.S. Agencies Reviewing Decision to Export High-Tech Support to Syria
Saturday, November 17, 2007
By George Russell
E-Mail Print Digg This! del.icio.us
Officials from three U.S. agencies are now reviewing their records over the past three years to see if permission should have been granted for a major American computer company to ship "sensitive" technology to Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism.
FOX News originally reported that after years of harsh talk and escalating rounds of sanctions against Syria for supporting terror and seeking weapons of mass destruction, the United States is quietly supporting a United Nations program to supply the regime with sophisticated surveillance equipment and computers to monitor its borders.
That surreptitious support emerged in the course of a FOX News investigation that began after a surprise Israeli air strike on September 6 destroyed a mysterious Syrian facility that many experts believe was a North Korean-style nuclear reactor.
But as the Syrian government enters the closing stages of the $9 million program to upgrade its customs and border operations computer systems, officials from the National Security Council, the Commerce Department and the State Department are investigating the matter.
One of the vendors involved, according to obtained documents, is Cisco Systems, which received a special export license from the Commerce Department 14 months ago to ship routers, switches and other high-tech gear to Syria. Senior Bush Administration officials tell FOX News that the Executive Board for the U.N. Development Program, which coordinated the work, was only asked to approve a broad "country program" for Syria, including a single reference to the modernization of its ports and customs operations.
The gap between the Bush Administration’s anti-Syrian rhetoric and reality emerges in the book-keeping of the $5.2 billion United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s flagship development agency, which has come under heavy fire for its improper funneling of cash to the regime of North Korean dictator and nuclear proliferator Kim Jong Il.
This time the issue is UNDP’s ties — and those of the U.S. and the European Union — to the Baathist regime of Syrian President Bashir Assad, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its sponsorship of international terrorism, destabilization of Lebanon and its shipping of terrorists and weapons to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the relationship raises questions.
"The United States government is working very closely with a number of different countries around the world in order to upgrade their customs and border monitoring capabilities," he said. "It's important development in fighting the war on terror. Now when you're talking specifically about Syria and this kind of equipment, it raises some questions. And because these questions have been raised, we're going back and taking a look to see exactly what steps were followed on our side, in granting licenses, and on the UNDP side, what steps were followed in terms of requesting those licenses."
U.N. Development Program documents show that prior to the issuance of the license, there was concern about the applicability of U.S. sanctions. A program procurement officer wrote in October 2005 that "due to sanctions, Cisco may not be able to supply the items such as routers, switches etc. directly to Syria."
Syria’s own ties to North Korea and its clandestine attempts to gain weapons of mass destruction were dramatically underlined on Sept. 6, when Israeli Air Force F-15s blasted the secret nuclear facility.
According to Bush Administration statements, Syria is a pariah state. It has been under escalating forms of U.S. economic, financial and trade sanctions since 2003, culminating in a broad ban on the export of U.S. goods to the Assad regime in May 2004, as a result of its alleged terrorist activities. Export controls on goods intended for Syria are in the same category as those on exports to Iran, North Korea and Sudan, likewise designated for their support for international terrorism.
They are backed up by other presidential executive orders that slapped U.S. financial sanctions on a variety of Syrian government officials, banks, and companies for being involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, association with al Qaeda, and destabilizing activities in Iraq and Lebanon. The most recent order was signed in August.
All of which makes especially mysterious UNDP’s purchase and supply to Syria of more than $2.1 million worth of computers, servers, local and wide area networking equipment, networked surveillance cameras and other high-tech goods, under the bland heading of “Modernization of Syrian Customs Directorate.”
The money for the goods comes from the Syrian government itself, part of an $8.1 million construction and equipment deal that has been going on quietly since Feb. 1, 2005. UNDP is spending some $480,000 of its own on the deal, and it expects to refund nearly $1.6 million in unspent funds to the Syrian government.
The deal also involves the purchase of some $2 million worth of specialized software from another U.N. branch, the Geneva-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
According to UNDP, the customs modernization deal is entirely on the up-and-up. A UNDP spokesman told FOX News in response to e-mailed questions that it “will benefit the business environment and the private sector through transparency, trade facilitation, simplification and consistency of procedures, efficient clearance of goods, remote filing and national entry processing.”
The customs upgrade has been mentioned in UNDP official documents that have been approved by a 36-nation executive board, which includes the United States.
(The mention consists of a half-dozen words at the end of a single sentence in a dense 12-page document. As the UNDP spokesman noted, by way of explanation in response to FOX News questions, “UNDP’s Executive Board approves country programs, not specific projects.” Purchase of goods for the project was specifically approved, per UNDP procedures, by Akiko Yuge, head of UNDP’s Bureau of Management, and by the organization’s No. 2 official, Associate Administrator Ad Melkert.)
Most importantly, UNDP’s high-tech undertaking is covered by a U.S. export license from the Department of Commerce, Industry and Security for the sensitive Cisco goods, meaning that the U.N. organization can export them without penalty under U.S. law. The license, which is granted to Cisco, is numbered D357459. It was issued on Sept. 6, 2006 — exactly one year before the strike on the mysterious Syrian nuclear facility.
What’s going on?
It appears that UNDP, the U.S., and yet another partner in Syria’s “customs modernization,” the European Union, have been engaged in a game of incentive diplomacy with the Assad regime, quietly laying the building blocks for a broader trade-for-peace framework with Syria and its neighbors while talking tough and brandishing trade and financial cudgels that are less than meet the eye.
The 2004 U.S. trade sanctions were renewed with fanfare in May 2005. They were renewed with additional sanctions targeting specific officials of the Syrian regime in May 2006; those sanctions were renewed yet again on May 8, 2007.
But the September 2006 U.S. export control license is a strong sign that the original 2004 export controls, which allow a presidential waiver for exports “in support of activities of the U.S. government,” among other things, have been allowed to develop a loophole big enough for a high-tech overhaul of Syria’s borders — and perhaps other holes as well.
If so, they are holes that the Bush Administration is not anxious to discuss. Repeated requests by FOX News to the Department of Commerce, Industry and Security to glean information on the high-tech exports and their legality were initially met with silence. And even though UNDP has freely answered questions posed by FOX News about the nature of the customs project and its history, sources within the organization report that UNDP staff have been grilled as to how FOX came to learn sensitive details of the project in the first place.
It may be that the biggest reason for the silence in Washington is the bombing of Syria’s suspected nuclear facility — an action that Israel has not admitted or discussed. The existence of the facility — which had been under construction for an estimated two or three years — apparently involved clandestine cooperation with North Korea, a view widely accepted in diplomatic and national security circles.
The now-destroyed secret facility casts a large shadow of skepticism over any notion that a program of trade improvement, trade preferences and technology transfers is enough to induce the Assad regime to give up terrorist meddling and cease any quest for weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, it underlines the extent to which the negotiators of the trade-for-peace strategy may have been lulled into believing that their approach would contain the proliferation appetite of the Syrian regime.
Indeed, the design and construction of the secret Syrian facility was evidently taking place during all the time that the customs modernization project was itself being negotiated and built. The facility was evidently well underway by the time the Bush Administration issued its export certificate for UNDP to ship embargoed components of the system to Syria.
Even though UNDP and the Bush Administration had significant roles in the customs project, the biggest player is clearly the European Union. Ever since 2004 — the same year the Bush Administration announced its trade embargo against Syria — the E.U. has been dangling a strategy of enhanced trade relations with countries on the southern edge of the Mediterranean as part of a “European Neighborhood” policy aimed at expanding the E.U.’s economic sphere of influence.
The big stumbling block was Syria. Due to Syrian human rights violations, intrusiveness in Lebanon and support for terrorist activity in Iraq and elsewhere, E.U. officials have been unable to complete bilateral agreements with Syria that would seal their overall partnership.
Instead, they have apparently proceeded piecemeal. UNDP officials told FOX News that their own customs project was designed to be “complementary” to an even costlier — roughly $11 million — European Union customs modernization package for Syria. According to UNDP, “the E.U.’s work is on internal work process of customs” — essentially software — which would have kept E.U. fingerprints off politically sensitive technology transfers.
Questions sent by e-mail to the European Union’s customs project supervisors in Syria went unanswered.
UNDP expects it will have finished its part of the customs modernization in three to four months’ time.
George Russell is executive editor of FOX News. FOX News' James Rosen contributed to this report.
This report shows that UNDP and United Nations, by continuing its alliance with dictators and rogue regimes, despite the hudreds of millions of dollars received from the United States, have turned themselves into clandestine agencies providing coverage for international terrorist.
The US should suspend its funding to such organizations, and should strengthen its controls into the United Nations by ensuring that the US taxpayers money is used for what is intended and not be diverted.
FOXNEWS.COM HOME > WORLD
Three U.S. Agencies Reviewing Decision to Export High-Tech Support to Syria
Saturday, November 17, 2007
By George Russell
E-Mail Print Digg This! del.icio.us
Officials from three U.S. agencies are now reviewing their records over the past three years to see if permission should have been granted for a major American computer company to ship "sensitive" technology to Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism.
FOX News originally reported that after years of harsh talk and escalating rounds of sanctions against Syria for supporting terror and seeking weapons of mass destruction, the United States is quietly supporting a United Nations program to supply the regime with sophisticated surveillance equipment and computers to monitor its borders.
That surreptitious support emerged in the course of a FOX News investigation that began after a surprise Israeli air strike on September 6 destroyed a mysterious Syrian facility that many experts believe was a North Korean-style nuclear reactor.
But as the Syrian government enters the closing stages of the $9 million program to upgrade its customs and border operations computer systems, officials from the National Security Council, the Commerce Department and the State Department are investigating the matter.
One of the vendors involved, according to obtained documents, is Cisco Systems, which received a special export license from the Commerce Department 14 months ago to ship routers, switches and other high-tech gear to Syria. Senior Bush Administration officials tell FOX News that the Executive Board for the U.N. Development Program, which coordinated the work, was only asked to approve a broad "country program" for Syria, including a single reference to the modernization of its ports and customs operations.
The gap between the Bush Administration’s anti-Syrian rhetoric and reality emerges in the book-keeping of the $5.2 billion United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s flagship development agency, which has come under heavy fire for its improper funneling of cash to the regime of North Korean dictator and nuclear proliferator Kim Jong Il.
This time the issue is UNDP’s ties — and those of the U.S. and the European Union — to the Baathist regime of Syrian President Bashir Assad, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its sponsorship of international terrorism, destabilization of Lebanon and its shipping of terrorists and weapons to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the relationship raises questions.
"The United States government is working very closely with a number of different countries around the world in order to upgrade their customs and border monitoring capabilities," he said. "It's important development in fighting the war on terror. Now when you're talking specifically about Syria and this kind of equipment, it raises some questions. And because these questions have been raised, we're going back and taking a look to see exactly what steps were followed on our side, in granting licenses, and on the UNDP side, what steps were followed in terms of requesting those licenses."
U.N. Development Program documents show that prior to the issuance of the license, there was concern about the applicability of U.S. sanctions. A program procurement officer wrote in October 2005 that "due to sanctions, Cisco may not be able to supply the items such as routers, switches etc. directly to Syria."
Syria’s own ties to North Korea and its clandestine attempts to gain weapons of mass destruction were dramatically underlined on Sept. 6, when Israeli Air Force F-15s blasted the secret nuclear facility.
According to Bush Administration statements, Syria is a pariah state. It has been under escalating forms of U.S. economic, financial and trade sanctions since 2003, culminating in a broad ban on the export of U.S. goods to the Assad regime in May 2004, as a result of its alleged terrorist activities. Export controls on goods intended for Syria are in the same category as those on exports to Iran, North Korea and Sudan, likewise designated for their support for international terrorism.
They are backed up by other presidential executive orders that slapped U.S. financial sanctions on a variety of Syrian government officials, banks, and companies for being involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, association with al Qaeda, and destabilizing activities in Iraq and Lebanon. The most recent order was signed in August.
All of which makes especially mysterious UNDP’s purchase and supply to Syria of more than $2.1 million worth of computers, servers, local and wide area networking equipment, networked surveillance cameras and other high-tech goods, under the bland heading of “Modernization of Syrian Customs Directorate.”
The money for the goods comes from the Syrian government itself, part of an $8.1 million construction and equipment deal that has been going on quietly since Feb. 1, 2005. UNDP is spending some $480,000 of its own on the deal, and it expects to refund nearly $1.6 million in unspent funds to the Syrian government.
The deal also involves the purchase of some $2 million worth of specialized software from another U.N. branch, the Geneva-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
According to UNDP, the customs modernization deal is entirely on the up-and-up. A UNDP spokesman told FOX News in response to e-mailed questions that it “will benefit the business environment and the private sector through transparency, trade facilitation, simplification and consistency of procedures, efficient clearance of goods, remote filing and national entry processing.”
The customs upgrade has been mentioned in UNDP official documents that have been approved by a 36-nation executive board, which includes the United States.
(The mention consists of a half-dozen words at the end of a single sentence in a dense 12-page document. As the UNDP spokesman noted, by way of explanation in response to FOX News questions, “UNDP’s Executive Board approves country programs, not specific projects.” Purchase of goods for the project was specifically approved, per UNDP procedures, by Akiko Yuge, head of UNDP’s Bureau of Management, and by the organization’s No. 2 official, Associate Administrator Ad Melkert.)
Most importantly, UNDP’s high-tech undertaking is covered by a U.S. export license from the Department of Commerce, Industry and Security for the sensitive Cisco goods, meaning that the U.N. organization can export them without penalty under U.S. law. The license, which is granted to Cisco, is numbered D357459. It was issued on Sept. 6, 2006 — exactly one year before the strike on the mysterious Syrian nuclear facility.
What’s going on?
It appears that UNDP, the U.S., and yet another partner in Syria’s “customs modernization,” the European Union, have been engaged in a game of incentive diplomacy with the Assad regime, quietly laying the building blocks for a broader trade-for-peace framework with Syria and its neighbors while talking tough and brandishing trade and financial cudgels that are less than meet the eye.
The 2004 U.S. trade sanctions were renewed with fanfare in May 2005. They were renewed with additional sanctions targeting specific officials of the Syrian regime in May 2006; those sanctions were renewed yet again on May 8, 2007.
But the September 2006 U.S. export control license is a strong sign that the original 2004 export controls, which allow a presidential waiver for exports “in support of activities of the U.S. government,” among other things, have been allowed to develop a loophole big enough for a high-tech overhaul of Syria’s borders — and perhaps other holes as well.
If so, they are holes that the Bush Administration is not anxious to discuss. Repeated requests by FOX News to the Department of Commerce, Industry and Security to glean information on the high-tech exports and their legality were initially met with silence. And even though UNDP has freely answered questions posed by FOX News about the nature of the customs project and its history, sources within the organization report that UNDP staff have been grilled as to how FOX came to learn sensitive details of the project in the first place.
It may be that the biggest reason for the silence in Washington is the bombing of Syria’s suspected nuclear facility — an action that Israel has not admitted or discussed. The existence of the facility — which had been under construction for an estimated two or three years — apparently involved clandestine cooperation with North Korea, a view widely accepted in diplomatic and national security circles.
The now-destroyed secret facility casts a large shadow of skepticism over any notion that a program of trade improvement, trade preferences and technology transfers is enough to induce the Assad regime to give up terrorist meddling and cease any quest for weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, it underlines the extent to which the negotiators of the trade-for-peace strategy may have been lulled into believing that their approach would contain the proliferation appetite of the Syrian regime.
Indeed, the design and construction of the secret Syrian facility was evidently taking place during all the time that the customs modernization project was itself being negotiated and built. The facility was evidently well underway by the time the Bush Administration issued its export certificate for UNDP to ship embargoed components of the system to Syria.
Even though UNDP and the Bush Administration had significant roles in the customs project, the biggest player is clearly the European Union. Ever since 2004 — the same year the Bush Administration announced its trade embargo against Syria — the E.U. has been dangling a strategy of enhanced trade relations with countries on the southern edge of the Mediterranean as part of a “European Neighborhood” policy aimed at expanding the E.U.’s economic sphere of influence.
The big stumbling block was Syria. Due to Syrian human rights violations, intrusiveness in Lebanon and support for terrorist activity in Iraq and elsewhere, E.U. officials have been unable to complete bilateral agreements with Syria that would seal their overall partnership.
Instead, they have apparently proceeded piecemeal. UNDP officials told FOX News that their own customs project was designed to be “complementary” to an even costlier — roughly $11 million — European Union customs modernization package for Syria. According to UNDP, “the E.U.’s work is on internal work process of customs” — essentially software — which would have kept E.U. fingerprints off politically sensitive technology transfers.
Questions sent by e-mail to the European Union’s customs project supervisors in Syria went unanswered.
UNDP expects it will have finished its part of the customs modernization in three to four months’ time.
George Russell is executive editor of FOX News. FOX News' James Rosen contributed to this report.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
U.S. Licensing High-Tech Exports to Syria Under U.N. Development Program
U.S. Licensing High-Tech Exports to Syria Under U.N. Development Program
Thursday , November 15, 2007
By George Russell
ADVERTISEMENTAfter years of harsh talk and escalating rounds of sanctions against Syria for supporting terror and seeking weapons of mass destruction, the United States is quietly supporting a United Nations program to supply the Syrian regime with sophisticated surveillance equipment and computers to monitor its borders.
That surreptitious support emerged in the course of a FOX News investigation that began after a surprise Israeli air strike on September 6 destroyed a mysterious Syrian facility that many experts believe was a North Korean-style nuclear reactor.
The gap between the Bush Administration’s anti-Syrian rhetoric and reality emerges in the book-keeping of the $5.2 billion United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s flagship development agency, which has come under heavy fire for its improper funneling of cash to the regime of North Korean dictator and nuclear proliferator Kim Jong Il.
This time the issue is UNDP’s ties — and those of the U.S. and the European Union — to the Baathist regime of Syrian President Bashir Assad, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its sponsorship of international terrorism, destabilization of Lebanon and its shipping of terrorists and weapons to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Syria’s own ties to North Korea and its clandestine attempts to gain weapons of mass destruction were dramatically underlined on Sept. 6, when Israeli Air Force F-15s blasted the secret nuclear facility.
According to Bush Administration statements, Syria is a pariah state. It has been under escalating forms of U.S. economic, financial and trade sanctions since 2003, culminating in a broad ban on the export of U.S. goods to the Assad regime in May 2004, as a result of its alleged terrorist activities. Export controls on goods intended for Syria are in the same category as those on exports to Iran, North Korea and Sudan, likewise designated for their support for international terrorism.
They are backed up by other presidential executive orders that slapped U.S. financial sanctions on a variety of Syrian government officials, banks, and companies for being involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, association with al Qaeda, and destabilizing activities in Iraq and Lebanon. The most recent order was signed in August.
All of which makes especially mysterious UNDP’s purchase and supply to Syria of more than $2.1 million worth of computers, servers, local and wide area networking equipment, networked surveillance cameras and other high-tech goods, under the bland heading of “Modernization of Syrian Customs Directorate.”
Included among the goods are network routers and other equipment manufactured by Cisco, a longtime UNDP partner, which are U.S. manufactured equipment that would be covered under any export ban.
The money for the goods comes from the Syrian government itself, part of an $8.1 million construction and equipment deal that has been going on quietly since Feb. 1, 2005. UNDP is spending some $480,000 of its own on the deal, and it expects to refund nearly $1.6 million in unspent funds to the Syrian government.
The deal also involves the purchase of some $2 million worth of specialized software from another U.N. branch, the Geneva-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
According to UNDP, the customs modernization deal is entirely on the up-and-up. A UNDP spokesman told FOX News in response to e-mailed questions that it “will benefit the business environment and the private sector through transparency, trade facilitation, simplification and consistency of procedures, efficient clearance of goods, remote filing and national entry processing.”
The customs upgrade has been mentioned in UNDP official documents that have been approved by a 36-nation executive board, which includes the United States.
(The mention consists of a half-dozen words at the end of a single sentence in a dense 12-page document. As the UNDP spokesman noted, by way of explanation in response to FOX News questions, “UNDP’s Executive Board approves country programs, not specific projects.” Purchase of goods for the project was specifically approved, per UNDP procedures, by Akiko Yuge, head of UNDP’s Bureau of Management, and by the organization’s No. 2 official, Associate Administrator Ad Melkert.)
Most importantly, UNDP’s high-tech undertaking is covered by a U.S. export license from the Department of Commerce, Industry and Security for the sensitive Cisco goods, meaning that the U.N. organization can export them without penalty under U.S. law. The license, which is granted to Cisco, is numbered D357459. It was issued on Sept. 6, 2006 — exactly one year before the strike on the mysterious Syrian nuclear facility.
What’s going on?
It appears that UNDP, the U.S., and yet another partner in Syria’s “customs modernization,” the European Union, have been engaged in a game of incentive diplomacy with the Assad regime, quietly laying the building blocks for a broader trade-for-peace framework with Syria and its neighbors while talking tough and brandishing trade and financial cudgels that are less than meet the eye.
The 2004 U.S. trade sanctions were renewed with fanfare in May 2005. They were renewed with additional sanctions targeting specific officials of the Syrian regime in May 2006; those sanctions were renewed yet again on May 8, 2007.
But the September 2006 U.S. export control license is a strong sign that the original 2004 export controls, which allow a presidential waiver for exports “in support of activities of the U.S. government,” among other things, have been allowed to develop a loophole big enough for a high-tech overhaul of Syria’s borders — and perhaps other holes as well.
If so, they are holes that the Bush Administration is not anxious to discuss. Repeated requests by FOX News to the Department of Commerce, Industry and Security to glean information on the high-tech exports and their legality were met with silence. And even though UNDP has freely answered questions posed by FOX News about the nature of the customs project and its history, sources within the organization report that UNDP staff have been grilled as to how FOX came to learn sensitive details of the project in the first place.
It may be that the biggest reason for the silence in Washington is the bombing of Syria’s suspected nuclear facility — an action that Israel has not admitted or discussed. The existence of the facility — which had been under construction for an estimated two or three years — apparently involved clandestine cooperation with North Korea, a view widely accepted in diplomatic and national security circles.
The now-destroyed secret facility casts a large shadow of skepticism over any notion that a program of trade improvement, trade preferences and technology transfers is enough to induce the Assad regime to give up terrorist meddling and cease any quest for weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, it underlines the extent to which the negotiators of the trade-for-peace strategy may have been lulled into believing that their approach would contain the proliferation appetite of the Syrian regime.
Indeed, the design and construction of the secret Syrian facility was evidently taking place during all the time that the customs modernization project was itself being negotiated and built. The facility was evidently well underway by the time the Bush Administration issued its export certificate for UNDP to ship embargoed components of the system to Syria.
Even though UNDP and the Bush Administration had significant roles in the customs project, the biggest player is clearly the European Union. Ever since 2004 — the same year the Bush Administration announced its trade embargo against Syria — the E.U. has been dangling a strategy of enhanced trade relations with countries on the southern edge of the Mediterranean as part of a “European Neighborhood” policy aimed at expanding the E.U.’s economic sphere of influence.
The big stumbling block was Syria. Due to Syrian human rights violations, intrusiveness in Lebanon and support for terrorist activity in Iraq and elsewhere, E.U. officials have been unable to complete bilateral agreements with Syria that would seal their overall partnership.
Instead, they have apparently proceeded piecemeal. UNDP officials told FOX News that their own customs project was designed to be “complementary” to an even costlier — roughly $11 million — European Union customs modernization package for Syria. According to UNDP, “the E.U.’s work is on internal work process of customs” — essentially software — which would have kept E.U. fingerprints off politically sensitive technology transfers.
Questions sent by e-mail to the European Union’s customs project supervisors in Syria went unanswered.
UNDP expects it will have finished its part of the customs modernization in three to four months’ time.
George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.
Thursday , November 15, 2007
By George Russell
ADVERTISEMENTAfter years of harsh talk and escalating rounds of sanctions against Syria for supporting terror and seeking weapons of mass destruction, the United States is quietly supporting a United Nations program to supply the Syrian regime with sophisticated surveillance equipment and computers to monitor its borders.
That surreptitious support emerged in the course of a FOX News investigation that began after a surprise Israeli air strike on September 6 destroyed a mysterious Syrian facility that many experts believe was a North Korean-style nuclear reactor.
The gap between the Bush Administration’s anti-Syrian rhetoric and reality emerges in the book-keeping of the $5.2 billion United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s flagship development agency, which has come under heavy fire for its improper funneling of cash to the regime of North Korean dictator and nuclear proliferator Kim Jong Il.
This time the issue is UNDP’s ties — and those of the U.S. and the European Union — to the Baathist regime of Syrian President Bashir Assad, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its sponsorship of international terrorism, destabilization of Lebanon and its shipping of terrorists and weapons to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Syria’s own ties to North Korea and its clandestine attempts to gain weapons of mass destruction were dramatically underlined on Sept. 6, when Israeli Air Force F-15s blasted the secret nuclear facility.
According to Bush Administration statements, Syria is a pariah state. It has been under escalating forms of U.S. economic, financial and trade sanctions since 2003, culminating in a broad ban on the export of U.S. goods to the Assad regime in May 2004, as a result of its alleged terrorist activities. Export controls on goods intended for Syria are in the same category as those on exports to Iran, North Korea and Sudan, likewise designated for their support for international terrorism.
They are backed up by other presidential executive orders that slapped U.S. financial sanctions on a variety of Syrian government officials, banks, and companies for being involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, association with al Qaeda, and destabilizing activities in Iraq and Lebanon. The most recent order was signed in August.
All of which makes especially mysterious UNDP’s purchase and supply to Syria of more than $2.1 million worth of computers, servers, local and wide area networking equipment, networked surveillance cameras and other high-tech goods, under the bland heading of “Modernization of Syrian Customs Directorate.”
Included among the goods are network routers and other equipment manufactured by Cisco, a longtime UNDP partner, which are U.S. manufactured equipment that would be covered under any export ban.
The money for the goods comes from the Syrian government itself, part of an $8.1 million construction and equipment deal that has been going on quietly since Feb. 1, 2005. UNDP is spending some $480,000 of its own on the deal, and it expects to refund nearly $1.6 million in unspent funds to the Syrian government.
The deal also involves the purchase of some $2 million worth of specialized software from another U.N. branch, the Geneva-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
According to UNDP, the customs modernization deal is entirely on the up-and-up. A UNDP spokesman told FOX News in response to e-mailed questions that it “will benefit the business environment and the private sector through transparency, trade facilitation, simplification and consistency of procedures, efficient clearance of goods, remote filing and national entry processing.”
The customs upgrade has been mentioned in UNDP official documents that have been approved by a 36-nation executive board, which includes the United States.
(The mention consists of a half-dozen words at the end of a single sentence in a dense 12-page document. As the UNDP spokesman noted, by way of explanation in response to FOX News questions, “UNDP’s Executive Board approves country programs, not specific projects.” Purchase of goods for the project was specifically approved, per UNDP procedures, by Akiko Yuge, head of UNDP’s Bureau of Management, and by the organization’s No. 2 official, Associate Administrator Ad Melkert.)
Most importantly, UNDP’s high-tech undertaking is covered by a U.S. export license from the Department of Commerce, Industry and Security for the sensitive Cisco goods, meaning that the U.N. organization can export them without penalty under U.S. law. The license, which is granted to Cisco, is numbered D357459. It was issued on Sept. 6, 2006 — exactly one year before the strike on the mysterious Syrian nuclear facility.
What’s going on?
It appears that UNDP, the U.S., and yet another partner in Syria’s “customs modernization,” the European Union, have been engaged in a game of incentive diplomacy with the Assad regime, quietly laying the building blocks for a broader trade-for-peace framework with Syria and its neighbors while talking tough and brandishing trade and financial cudgels that are less than meet the eye.
The 2004 U.S. trade sanctions were renewed with fanfare in May 2005. They were renewed with additional sanctions targeting specific officials of the Syrian regime in May 2006; those sanctions were renewed yet again on May 8, 2007.
But the September 2006 U.S. export control license is a strong sign that the original 2004 export controls, which allow a presidential waiver for exports “in support of activities of the U.S. government,” among other things, have been allowed to develop a loophole big enough for a high-tech overhaul of Syria’s borders — and perhaps other holes as well.
If so, they are holes that the Bush Administration is not anxious to discuss. Repeated requests by FOX News to the Department of Commerce, Industry and Security to glean information on the high-tech exports and their legality were met with silence. And even though UNDP has freely answered questions posed by FOX News about the nature of the customs project and its history, sources within the organization report that UNDP staff have been grilled as to how FOX came to learn sensitive details of the project in the first place.
It may be that the biggest reason for the silence in Washington is the bombing of Syria’s suspected nuclear facility — an action that Israel has not admitted or discussed. The existence of the facility — which had been under construction for an estimated two or three years — apparently involved clandestine cooperation with North Korea, a view widely accepted in diplomatic and national security circles.
The now-destroyed secret facility casts a large shadow of skepticism over any notion that a program of trade improvement, trade preferences and technology transfers is enough to induce the Assad regime to give up terrorist meddling and cease any quest for weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover, it underlines the extent to which the negotiators of the trade-for-peace strategy may have been lulled into believing that their approach would contain the proliferation appetite of the Syrian regime.
Indeed, the design and construction of the secret Syrian facility was evidently taking place during all the time that the customs modernization project was itself being negotiated and built. The facility was evidently well underway by the time the Bush Administration issued its export certificate for UNDP to ship embargoed components of the system to Syria.
Even though UNDP and the Bush Administration had significant roles in the customs project, the biggest player is clearly the European Union. Ever since 2004 — the same year the Bush Administration announced its trade embargo against Syria — the E.U. has been dangling a strategy of enhanced trade relations with countries on the southern edge of the Mediterranean as part of a “European Neighborhood” policy aimed at expanding the E.U.’s economic sphere of influence.
The big stumbling block was Syria. Due to Syrian human rights violations, intrusiveness in Lebanon and support for terrorist activity in Iraq and elsewhere, E.U. officials have been unable to complete bilateral agreements with Syria that would seal their overall partnership.
Instead, they have apparently proceeded piecemeal. UNDP officials told FOX News that their own customs project was designed to be “complementary” to an even costlier — roughly $11 million — European Union customs modernization package for Syria. According to UNDP, “the E.U.’s work is on internal work process of customs” — essentially software — which would have kept E.U. fingerprints off politically sensitive technology transfers.
Questions sent by e-mail to the European Union’s customs project supervisors in Syria went unanswered.
UNDP expects it will have finished its part of the customs modernization in three to four months’ time.
George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.
Auditors: U.N. agencies paid North Korean staff, suppliers in hard currency without approval
Auditors: U.N. agencies paid North Korean staff, suppliers in hard currency without approval
The Associated Press
Published: June 1, 2007
UNITED NATIONS: U.N. agencies paid North Korean staff and suppliers in hard currency without approval and hired only government-approved staff in violation of U.N. procedures, U.N. auditors said.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ordered the external audit following U.S. accusations that the U.N. Development Program had funneled millions of dollars in hard currency to North Korea with little assurance that Kim Jong Il used the money to help his people instead of diverting it to "illicit purposes," including developing nuclear weapons.
"Even though this was only a preliminary review, the audit did confirm our concerns," U.S. deputy ambassador Mark Wallace told The Associated Press on Friday.
But David Morrison, spokesman for UNDP, said the audit confirmed what the agency has been saying since the U.S. allegations were made — that it had "a relatively small program" in North Korea, "certainly much smaller than the huge figures that have been circulating."
The audit, covering a five-year period from 2002 through 2006, was limited to U.N. staff and documents made available in New York — not in North Korea. It examined compliance with U.N. financial regulations and rules, and other directives aimed at ensuring that money spent in the reclusive communist nation went to the intended recipients.
Today on IHT.com
Officials scramble to help homeless in Chile earthquake
U.S. is looking past Musharraf in case he falls
British court approves extradition of radical cleric
Because of the limited scope of the audit, the U.N. Board of Auditors said it "does not express any opinion on the financial results" of activities carried out in North Korea by UNDP, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, the U.N. Population Fund and the U.N. Office for Project Services.
Over the five years, the report said the four U.N. agencies spent $72.5 million on programs in North Korea — including $55.2 million by UNICEF and $13.2 million by UNDP.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said the report points to some of the difficulties the U.N. agencies have had in operating in North Korea and "identifies practices not in keeping with how the U.N. operates elsewhere in the world."
"It should be noted that the report does not indicate that large-scale U.N. funding has been systematically diverted, as has been alleged," she said. "However, the secretary-general does expect the agencies to act upon the findings in the audit as quickly and transparently as possible."
According to the board's 32-page report, all four U.N. agencies made payments at different times in foreign currency, in North Korean won which can only be used locally, and in North Korean won which can be converted to hard currency.
The auditors said all payments in euros, won, and convertible won were made by checks, but they could not determine whether the checks were made out to suppliers or to cash. That prohibited them from determining what payments may have been made to local suppliers or staff, the report said.
In its findings, the auditors said that local payments made in foreign currencies were "without requisite authority" in the case of UNDP, the U.N. Population Fund and the U.N. Office for Project Services.
Jehane Sedky, spokeswoman for UNICEF, said "we're authorized to use foreign currency in our programs" by the UNICEF board. But rather than paying in euros in North Korea, she said, "we did shift to the convertible won a few months ago."
While UNICEF is still operating in North Korea, UNDP suspended operations on March 1 because North Korea failed to meet conditions set by its board following the U.S. allegations. North Korea asked the last two UNDP staffers to leave Pyongyang on May 3.
Morrison said the future of its North Korea program is "in the hands of the executive board."
"In our view, the relevant financial rules and regulations are in fact silent on the issue of use of currency for UNDP," he said.
As for local staff hiring, the auditors said UNDP, UNICEF and the U.N. Population Fund hired personnel "through a government agency ... contrary to relevant instructions and procedures." The board said it also "obtained evidence that project visits had taken place, but were done under the supervision" of North Korean authorities except for one UNICEF project.
Morrison said UNDP's hiring practices in North Korea existed for 27 years and "when concerns were raised, we changed them."
The Associated Press
Published: June 1, 2007
UNITED NATIONS: U.N. agencies paid North Korean staff and suppliers in hard currency without approval and hired only government-approved staff in violation of U.N. procedures, U.N. auditors said.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ordered the external audit following U.S. accusations that the U.N. Development Program had funneled millions of dollars in hard currency to North Korea with little assurance that Kim Jong Il used the money to help his people instead of diverting it to "illicit purposes," including developing nuclear weapons.
"Even though this was only a preliminary review, the audit did confirm our concerns," U.S. deputy ambassador Mark Wallace told The Associated Press on Friday.
But David Morrison, spokesman for UNDP, said the audit confirmed what the agency has been saying since the U.S. allegations were made — that it had "a relatively small program" in North Korea, "certainly much smaller than the huge figures that have been circulating."
The audit, covering a five-year period from 2002 through 2006, was limited to U.N. staff and documents made available in New York — not in North Korea. It examined compliance with U.N. financial regulations and rules, and other directives aimed at ensuring that money spent in the reclusive communist nation went to the intended recipients.
Today on IHT.com
Officials scramble to help homeless in Chile earthquake
U.S. is looking past Musharraf in case he falls
British court approves extradition of radical cleric
Because of the limited scope of the audit, the U.N. Board of Auditors said it "does not express any opinion on the financial results" of activities carried out in North Korea by UNDP, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, the U.N. Population Fund and the U.N. Office for Project Services.
Over the five years, the report said the four U.N. agencies spent $72.5 million on programs in North Korea — including $55.2 million by UNICEF and $13.2 million by UNDP.
U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said the report points to some of the difficulties the U.N. agencies have had in operating in North Korea and "identifies practices not in keeping with how the U.N. operates elsewhere in the world."
"It should be noted that the report does not indicate that large-scale U.N. funding has been systematically diverted, as has been alleged," she said. "However, the secretary-general does expect the agencies to act upon the findings in the audit as quickly and transparently as possible."
According to the board's 32-page report, all four U.N. agencies made payments at different times in foreign currency, in North Korean won which can only be used locally, and in North Korean won which can be converted to hard currency.
The auditors said all payments in euros, won, and convertible won were made by checks, but they could not determine whether the checks were made out to suppliers or to cash. That prohibited them from determining what payments may have been made to local suppliers or staff, the report said.
In its findings, the auditors said that local payments made in foreign currencies were "without requisite authority" in the case of UNDP, the U.N. Population Fund and the U.N. Office for Project Services.
Jehane Sedky, spokeswoman for UNICEF, said "we're authorized to use foreign currency in our programs" by the UNICEF board. But rather than paying in euros in North Korea, she said, "we did shift to the convertible won a few months ago."
While UNICEF is still operating in North Korea, UNDP suspended operations on March 1 because North Korea failed to meet conditions set by its board following the U.S. allegations. North Korea asked the last two UNDP staffers to leave Pyongyang on May 3.
Morrison said the future of its North Korea program is "in the hands of the executive board."
"In our view, the relevant financial rules and regulations are in fact silent on the issue of use of currency for UNDP," he said.
As for local staff hiring, the auditors said UNDP, UNICEF and the U.N. Population Fund hired personnel "through a government agency ... contrary to relevant instructions and procedures." The board said it also "obtained evidence that project visits had taken place, but were done under the supervision" of North Korean authorities except for one UNICEF project.
Morrison said UNDP's hiring practices in North Korea existed for 27 years and "when concerns were raised, we changed them."
Audit finds U.N. violates own rules in North Korea
Audit finds U.N. violates own rules in North Korea
Fri Jun 1, 2007 8:29pm EDT
Featured Broker sponsored link
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. agencies violated their own rules in North Korea by employing national staff handpicked by the government and paying them in hard currency, according to a report by a U.N. board of auditors.
But the report, an interim survey, did not find that large-scale U.N. funding had been diverted systematically.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who ordered the audit, said preliminary findings needed to be followed up with a visit to North Korea by the auditors, drawn from France, South Africa and the Philippines.
The report said numerous items were not in their auditors possession, such as a checkbook kept in Pyongyang by the U.N. Development Fund, or UNDP, which was investigated along with the U.N. Children's Fund and the smaller U.N. Population Fund.
"The board was thus unable to determine whether the checks were made out in the name of the vendor or for cash, and therefore unable to determine what actual cash payments may have been made to local suppliers or staff," the report said.
Because of such limitations, the auditors said they could not yet "express any opinion on the financial results" of the U.N. agencies reviewed.
David Morrison, spokesman for UNDP, said all the checks, receipts and purchase orders were in Pyongyang. UNDP had supplied electronic records but was not asked to bring support documentation, which was voluminous, he said.
The controversy began last year when the United States, a member of the UNDP board, charged the agency violated rules by hiring staff vetted by the government and paid salaries in hard currency through the government.
SECRETIVE STATE
Mark Wallace, a U.S. deputy ambassador, has said millions of dollars may have been diverted to benefit the communist leadership of the secretive state. Asked why that was not evident in the report, a U.S. official said, "Stay tuned."
On Friday, Wallace, in a telephone conference, said, "The audit certainly validates some of our concerns in three areas" such as currency payments, violation of U.N. rules, the hiring of staff seconded by the government and a restriction on visits to sites where the program was being conducted.
Morrison, however, told a news conference, "There is nothing in the preliminary report to substantiate the central allegations that UNDP has been a 'steady and larger source of hard currency for the government.'"
The audit was conducted over a five-year period and said four U.N. agencies spent $72.5 million in North Korea, mainly $55.2 million by UNICEF and $13.2 million by UNDP.
UNDP said that over the last 10 years it spent a total of $30 million, some $3 million a year. It also handled an average of another $1 million a year in expenditures by other U.N. agencies, which did not have a regular presence.
UNDP suspended operations in North Korea on March 1 after the Pyongyang government refused to accept changes ordered by its board of directors, including that the agency not pay in hard currency and narrow the focus of its programs.
The U.N. agencies said many of the practices in North Korea, such as engaging a local work force through the government, had been common for years because there was little other choice.
For UNDP, Morris said practice has existed for the past 27 years and its board was aware of it.
((Editing by Vicki Allen; Reuters messaging: Evelyn.Leopold.reuters.com@reuters.net; 1-212-355-7424)
Fri Jun 1, 2007 8:29pm EDT
Featured Broker sponsored link
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. agencies violated their own rules in North Korea by employing national staff handpicked by the government and paying them in hard currency, according to a report by a U.N. board of auditors.
But the report, an interim survey, did not find that large-scale U.N. funding had been diverted systematically.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who ordered the audit, said preliminary findings needed to be followed up with a visit to North Korea by the auditors, drawn from France, South Africa and the Philippines.
The report said numerous items were not in their auditors possession, such as a checkbook kept in Pyongyang by the U.N. Development Fund, or UNDP, which was investigated along with the U.N. Children's Fund and the smaller U.N. Population Fund.
"The board was thus unable to determine whether the checks were made out in the name of the vendor or for cash, and therefore unable to determine what actual cash payments may have been made to local suppliers or staff," the report said.
Because of such limitations, the auditors said they could not yet "express any opinion on the financial results" of the U.N. agencies reviewed.
David Morrison, spokesman for UNDP, said all the checks, receipts and purchase orders were in Pyongyang. UNDP had supplied electronic records but was not asked to bring support documentation, which was voluminous, he said.
The controversy began last year when the United States, a member of the UNDP board, charged the agency violated rules by hiring staff vetted by the government and paid salaries in hard currency through the government.
SECRETIVE STATE
Mark Wallace, a U.S. deputy ambassador, has said millions of dollars may have been diverted to benefit the communist leadership of the secretive state. Asked why that was not evident in the report, a U.S. official said, "Stay tuned."
On Friday, Wallace, in a telephone conference, said, "The audit certainly validates some of our concerns in three areas" such as currency payments, violation of U.N. rules, the hiring of staff seconded by the government and a restriction on visits to sites where the program was being conducted.
Morrison, however, told a news conference, "There is nothing in the preliminary report to substantiate the central allegations that UNDP has been a 'steady and larger source of hard currency for the government.'"
The audit was conducted over a five-year period and said four U.N. agencies spent $72.5 million in North Korea, mainly $55.2 million by UNICEF and $13.2 million by UNDP.
UNDP said that over the last 10 years it spent a total of $30 million, some $3 million a year. It also handled an average of another $1 million a year in expenditures by other U.N. agencies, which did not have a regular presence.
UNDP suspended operations in North Korea on March 1 after the Pyongyang government refused to accept changes ordered by its board of directors, including that the agency not pay in hard currency and narrow the focus of its programs.
The U.N. agencies said many of the practices in North Korea, such as engaging a local work force through the government, had been common for years because there was little other choice.
For UNDP, Morris said practice has existed for the past 27 years and its board was aware of it.
((Editing by Vicki Allen; Reuters messaging: Evelyn.Leopold.reuters.com@reuters.net; 1-212-355-7424)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
