UNITED NATIONS, January 14 -- At the UN, what does it mean to take note of corruption? Back on March 16, 2007 a UN contractor named Corimec was suspended for having bribed Procurement Services official Alexander Yakovlev. On that day, UN spokesperson Michele Montas said "the UN has decided to suspend the register vendors Corimec Italia SPA, Volga-Dnepr Airlines and its subsidiary Volga-Dnepr ( Ireland) Ltd. in the vendor database in light of alleged inappropriate relationships between the above-mentioned companies and a former United Nations official. We have asked the Chief of Procurement to be here in the room today. He is right here. And Mr. Paul Buades will answer your questions more specifically on this."
Notice of disbarment was e-mailed out to all UN agencies, funds and programs. But the following month, the UN Development Program chose to ignore the bribery and suspension, and awarded Corimec an additional $2 million contract. Monday at the UN, Inner City Press asked the spokesperson for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "whether the Secretariat expects, once they've e-mailed out the name of a banned company, funds and programs obey and take note of it and not do business with it." The spokesperson answered that "the Secretary-General does expect the rest of the system to take note of it, yes." So what does it mean to take note?
Monday afternoon, Inner City Press asked UNDP's Office of Communication if there are other contractors, barred by the Secretariat, still doing business with UNDP. No answer was received by press time. Nor was there any response on these issues on UNDP's new "for the record" webpage, where UNDP has fought back against, most recently, reports about UNDP briefing the World Bank in Kenya about the recent election, on which UNDP consulted and after which some 700 people have died in violence, and about Millennium Campaign czar Eveline Herfkens and her $7,000 housing subsidy from the Dutch government. On the latter, UNDP first put up a statement that "UNDP deeply appreciates the leadership and performance of Eveline Herfkens as the Executive Co-coordinator of the United Nations Millennium Campaign...UNDP is not aware of ANY rules Ms. Herfkens has knowingly broken to further her own interests."
This was followed by an addition some days later, "Subsequent to issuing this statement, the UNDP Spokesperson became aware of the details of the housing subsidy received by Ms. Herfkens. UNDP is looking into this issue, including whether receipt of the subsidy violated the applicable UNDP staff rules, and whether Ms. Herfkens was aware of the rules. UNDP is also looking into Ms. Herfkens's U.S. green card application, the applicable rules, and whether she was aware of them."
This last implies that it makes a difference if Ms. Herfkens claims she was not aware of the rules. In fact, she has since been quoted that she was "too busy;" meanwhile, there is a call growing in Holland that she return all $280,000 in rent subsidy received. On Kenya, UNDP is apparently claiming it was misquoted by the World Bank. And on the Algiers bombing, no response has been received from UNDP to a January 8 request for UNDP's Office of Communications to "describe the role in security in Algeria of UNDP's Marc de Stanne de Bernis, including confirming or denying that he ever received requests to raise the threat level, or phase, in Algeria." The request was reiterated to UNDP on Monday, but still without response. One day, perhaps, UNDP will respond "for the record." Watch that site, and this one.
Footnote: Regarding Alexander Yakovlev, a persistent UN correspondent continues to insist that Yakovlev was seen in UN Headquarters last month, with an ground pass from a mission (and not the one you'd think). The correspondent, however, says that official sources have uniformily denied that Yakovlev was given a pass, and the mission at issues says they know nothing about it. Mysteries, mysteries...
