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Recently, the UN Development Program (UNDP), which provides developing countries with assistance combating poverty, improving democratic governance, and achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals, has faced accusations of corruption and mismanagement from certain quarters. Responding to an April 1 editorial in The Wall Street Journal that claimed the existence of "fraud and corruption in U.N. Development Program operations in North Korea," UNDP Director of Communications David Morrison today provided a strong rebuttal to these groundless assertions.
When the concerns about UNDP's program in North Korea were first raised, the secretary-general directed the U.N. Board of Auditors to conduct an audit of the program. Contrary to [WSJ's] assertion, the audit did not find "fraud and corruption." Instead, the audit reported that UNDP, similar to other U.N. and foreign organizations, had to alter some of its programmatic and administrative practices to operate in North Korea -- a fact of which UNDP board members, including the U.S., were well aware.
Morrison also cites a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report that also found no "fraud and corruption" in UNDP's operations in North Korea. He goes on to quote Mark Wallace, the erstwhile UN Ambassador for Management reform whom the Journal's editorial was extolling, as admitting that "we do not believe nor have we seen any corruption."
When UN and U.S. auditing boards both find no instances of corruption, and the individual (Wallace) who has promulgated these charges also admits not having found corruption, one would think the matter settled. In the interest of full investigation, though, one more independent panel, chaired by former Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, will submit its findings in the North Korea matter within the next few months, and Morrison patiently advises skeptics to await its report.
Comments
Once again we find an example of David Morrison indulging in UNDP’s favourite pastime: denial, confusion and obfuscation.
Every time the possibility of fraud and corruption in the activities of UNDP in North Korea is mentioned, UNDP urges everybody not to jump to conclusions and await the results of an “independent” investigation.
This however does not prevent UNDP itself from pre-empting the results of this investigation by forcefully claiming that there has been in fact no fraud and corruption in this programme.
At the same time they are up to their usual tricks of constantly delaying the results of their “so-called” investigation. It has now been postponed from the end of 2007 to the end of March 2008 to “in the coming months.”
Will there ever be an outcome?
I have personal experience of reporting corruption at UNDP, having to assume the cost of UNDP incompetence and corruption on my own account, being retaliated against and having to wait for the results of an audit that was going to happen in April 2001, then at various times in 2002, then in the beginning of 2003, then in the first half of 2003, then at the end of 2003.
In the beginning of 2008 it still has not happened.
What are needed are not more refutations and excuses issuing from UNDP, in an attempt to further confuse an increasingly sceptical public, but a commitment to a thorough house cleaning exercise.
Is the present management, including David Morrison, reluctant to do this out of fear that they will be included in the list of charlatans and parasites that need to go in order to clean up this organisation?
Posted by: Leon Kukkuk at April 8, 2008 2:06 AM