At
UN, Internal Controls Overridden
by UN Peacekeeping in CAR, OIOS
Retaliation, Ng
Echo
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive Series
UNITED NATIONS,
August 14 – The corruption in
the UN partially exposed in
the Ng
Lap Seng / John Ashe
trial continues.
The UN Office of Internal
Oversight Services which is
supposed to prevent this
allowed basic internal
controls to be overridden, as
in today's example in the UN
Mission in Central African
Republic (MINUSCA) and
retaliates against staff
members. Nothing has been
reformed in the seven month
tenure as Secretary General of
Antonio Guterres and his
Deputy Amina J. Mohammed, at
least not yet.
OIOS' Ben
Swanson and Michael Dudley
have been informed for example
that in “MINUSCA and possibly
a few others have simply
disregarded the advice
contained in these
communications, and have
proceeded to impose a new
organizational structure that
disregards these
requirements."
Now Inner
City Press quotes from a
leaked email from Milan
Trojanovic,
Director of
Mission
Support -
MINUSCA,
who has previously shown up in
another Inner City Press
exclusive on rapes by/in
MINUSCA, here.
The email: "I have reviewed
the fax dated 10 January 2017
from UNHQ on the centralized
warehousing operations manual
for field missions that you
are referring to, and
acknowledge that reference is
made to the location of
General Supply section under
Service Delivery. Having said
that, the fax provided
information meant to serve as
guidance for implementation,
not an instruction. The
instruction that I sent to you
on 31 October 2016 (DMS-2010)
remains valid, and corresponds
to the mission restructuring
between service delivery and
supply chain, as well as the
recommendation of the civilian
staffing review that supply
section be disbanded and the
functions integrated into the
centralized warehouse
operation. Moreover, my
decision was submitted to
UNHQ/ DFS leadership, who had
no objections. The specific
reference to General supply in
Service Delivery in the
guidance fax is therefore not
applicable to MINUSCA. I would
like to reiterate the need to
dissolve the Supply section
without further delay and move
the staff/ functions to the
centralized warehouse. Best
regards, Milan Trojanovic,
Director of Mission Support -
MINUSCA, Bangui, Republique
Centre Africaine." Swanson and
Dudley have been told: "One of
the staff members who
initially raised the issue
through the management
evaluation process has opted
to transfer to another mission
rather than be a part of what
they see as corruption: the
decision to transfer General
Supply Section from Service
Delivery to Supply Chain
Management, which allows the
Chief of this Service to
control all procurement
planning, budget planning,
actual procurement, receiving
and inspection of things like
rations, fuel supply etc., to
Chief , Supply Chain
Management, as well as their
storage and distribution of
these items. The Chief, Supply
Chain Management can now make
decisions on his own. He
has already shown this
tendency by going as far as
reversing an offer that had
already been made to a staff
member after the regular
recruitment procedures had
been followed and
completed. Staff members
claim that the evidence of
corruption under the new
organization structure is also
provided by the way the Chief,
Supply Chain has handled the
filling of the various units
now under him. The staff
members allege that he has
brought in his own cronies to
fill most of the available
posts under the re-structured
Service. In one case, he asked
for a staff member to be
recruited from the roster, and
when it transpired that his
preferred candidate was not on
the roster, he asked HR to
bring him on under a TJO
arrangement etc. A number of
other staff members of the
restructured Service have been
brought in from other missions
with promises for instant
promotions.”
This
type of favoritism and
retaliation, which OIOS is
supposed to be countering, is
rife within OIOS. In the UN
Dispute Tribunal case of
Nouinou v Secretary General,
for example, it is recounted
that Ms. Fatimazohra Nouinou
was the Assistant of the
Director of Investigations Michael
Stefanovic who raised
issues of corruption; she has
been retaliated against by the
new director of investigations
who abolished her post and
decided not to renew her
fixed-term contract. From the
new Administration? Silence to
day. We'll have more on both
of these case.
A connection to
the Ng Lap Seng case, in which
a U.S. jury rendered in less
than one day six guilty
verdicts under the Foreign
Corruption Practices Act,
money laundering and UN
bribery: since then President
of the UN General Assembly
couldn't have given Ng a
doctored General Assembly
resolution with out the help
of Ion Botnaru of the
Department of General Assembly
and Conference Management, why
was Botnaru and others still
in the UN never held to
account? The investigator in
charge within OIOS was Vlad
Dzuro, who let it go. Applying
the perverse UN logic that
cleared Michael Dudley of any
wrongdoing in the Nguyen-Kropp
& Postica case, the UN
seems to argue that Botnaru
could not be guilty of
misconduct because there is no
written procedure that
required him to conduct any
sort of ‘due diligence’ on Ng
Lap Seng before getting
involved with the guy. Or, in
an even more perverse logic
echoed this weekend in
Virginia, it is enough in the
UN to say one was just
following orders.
Coming full circle, when Inner
City Press was pursuing the Ng
Lap Seng and South South News
bribery scandals and after asking Under Secretary
General of the Department of
Public Information Cristina
Gallach about her role in Ng's
South South Awards
(she also did no due diligence
on Ng funded events in the UN,
even
the buying of the UN slavery
memorial) was evicted by
Gallach without
any hearing by Gallach, OIOS
was informed of Gallach's
obvious conflict of interest.
David Kanja acknowledged
receipt, calling it "OIOS Log:
OUSG-16-00114;" still OIOS
head Heidi Mendoza was
informed. And after 18 months,
nothing, nothing at all. Inner
City Press is still restricted
to minders in its UN coverage,
a former president of the UN
Correspondent Association,
which took Ng's South South
News' money and provided the
venue for Ng's photo op with
Ban Ki-moon, has been assigned
Inner City Press' workspace
but rarely comes in, never
asks questions.
The top post in
DPI has been renamed “Global
Communication” and will be
filled by Alison Smale; the
conflict of interest of the UN
department in charge of pro-UN
propaganda also having
unfettered discretion in
controlling media
accreditation and access
remains. We'll have more on
all this.
***
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