UN:A pattern of mismanagement and corruption has been discovered in UN peacekeeping operations, writes Colum Lynchat the UN in New York
A UN task force has uncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel, food, construction and other materials used by UN peacekeeping operations, which are in the midst of their largest expansion in 15 years.
In recent weeks, 10 procurement officials have been charged with misconduct for soliciting bribes and rigging bids in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Haiti. It has been the largest single crackdown on UN staff wrongdoing in the field in more than a decade.
The taskforce has issued a series of public and confidential reports charging that corruption has spread from UN headquarters - where three officials have been convicted in bribery schemes - to the far reaches of its growing peacekeeping empire. The taskforce has also cast a spotlight on the UN's repeated failure to take action against officials long suspected of wrongdoing, allowing them to carry out criminal schemes in one UN mission after another.
"The taskforce identified multiple instances of fraud, corruption, waste and mismanagement at UN headquarters and peacekeeping missions, including 10 significant instances of fraud and corruption with aggregate value in excess of $610 million," said one report by the taskforce.
The crop of new corruption cases highlights the limits of reforms imposed since the early 1990s, when a previous build-up of peacekeeping missions led to reports of rampant corruption in Cambodia, Somalia and the Balkans. In response, the UN created the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) in 1994, but it has a poor record of holding corrupt officials to account.
The recent investigation in DRC revealed "widespread and inherent corruption" throughout the mission's purchasing department. One official targeted in the probe, Abdul Karim Masri, had emerged unscathed from repeated OIOS inquiries into his alleged activities over more than a decade. The taskforce charged that Masri (54) engaged in an "extensive pattern of bribery" during his seven years in DRC, according to a confidential account of the inquiry.
The unit claimed Masri accepted a $10,000 bribe from a boating company, steered a lucrative catering contract to a friend, and persuaded one UN contractor to paint his apartment and swimming pool for free and another to supply him with a discount on a Mercedes-Benz.
Masri declined repeated requests by e-mail to comment on the findings, saying that UN rules do not permit him to "deal with the press".
In Haiti the UN charged five employees with misconduct after the taskforce established that they had steered a $10 million-a-year fuel contract to a Haitian company, Distributeurs Nationaux SA, according to UN officials and confidential documents. The taskforce has been unable to prove that the five profited from the scheme, citing its lack of authority to subpoena bank records, but they recommended the case be referred for criminal prosecution by authorities in Haiti or the US.
UN officials privately contend that some malfeasance is inevitable in an organisation that processes 12,000 purchase orders in the field each year and buys enough energy to power a city larger than Washington, DC.
They also noted that some previous UN corruption crackdowns have unravelled under closer examination.
"I don't believe there is, or that [ the investigators] have found, a culture out there of fraudulent behaviours," said Philip Cooper, an Australian who administers UN peacekeeping missions. "We have our share of malpractice, but we do not have many cases of straight-out fraud like has been found in the Congo."
The latest investigations grew out of the probe into the UN's Iraqi oil-for-food programme.
It comes as spending on peacekeeping operations is rising - from $2.2 billion in 2004 to $7 billion - supporting a force of more than 100,000 peacekeepers.