UNITED NATIONS — A task force established to ferret out corruption in United Nations purchasing practices will report the details of five new cases involving some $20 million in contracts to the General Assembly on Thursday, as well as preliminary details of eight other inquiries.
The report, covering July 2007 to July 2008, includes several allegations of United Nations employees’ steering contracts to close relatives or to vendors involved in kickback schemes.
The report from the Procurement Task Force, leaving out some details of individuals still under investigation, was released several weeks ago, just three months before the group’s mandate from the General Assembly was scheduled to run out at the end of December.
The task force is investigating some 50 cases involving fraud or corruption, which will be transferred to the investigations division in the internal oversight office of the United Nations.
The task force has been viewed with suspicion by some United Nations members since it was formed in January 2006, after the oil-for-food scandal involving kickbacks in the program under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil and to buy humanitarian goods.
The task force report said that 22 vendors had been sanctioned by the United Nations during its years in operation and that it had identified more than 20 fraud and corruption schemes involved in some $630 million in contracts.
But the report and two responses from the United Nations underscore the tension between the Secretariat building and the task force, which is run by Robert Appleton, a former assistant United States attorney in Connecticut, and has 19 investigators of diverse nationalities.
The task force says the United Nations has not done enough to screen vendors and has allowed corrupt individuals to continue getting contracts after changing companies’ names. It also criticizes the organization for not pursuing millions of dollars in lost revenue with any zeal.
“It is a matter of concern that the task force’s recommendations for recovery actions — supported by documentary evidence of fraud, corruption and misappropriation of funds resulting in losses and damages — have not been vigorously pursued,” the report says.
Senior United Nations officials responded that often the task force did not provide the detail needed to pursue the individuals.
In its official response to the report, the Secretariat said the task force overstepped its authority in recommending whom and what to pursue. The response, issued by the office of Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, said “a recommendation or finding of severe performance failings does not necessarily constitute misconduct or bind the discretion of the secretary general.”
A clash of cultures is also evident, with the task force calling any fraud a poor reflection on the United Nations. But a review by the United Nations Board of Auditors suggested that the damage done was unclear because the task force “was only able to identify clear losses of $25 million.”
The main task force report and the secretary general’s response were first reported in The Washington Post on Tuesday. The reports were released without fanfare more than two weeks ago, quietly placed on public display racks among a blizzard of the organization’s documents.
In one case in Kenya investigated by the task force, an operations assistant involved in buying supplies via the United Nations Office for Project Services steered contracts to various companies, including one called Depasse Logistics, owned by her husband, according to the full investigation report posted on the American Embassy Web site.
The value of the contracts awarded amounted to $800,000. The woman and another employee were dismissed, and 12 companies were banned from doing business with the United Nations.
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