Documents Reveal Widespread Corruption and “Ghost Staffing” Within the UN’s Program in Afghanistan ~ & gee these fucks wanna run the world ...hows that work~in fer us ,folks ,huh! ..hows that go~in ?
UNITED NATIONS —
The United States is about to leave Afghanistan, transferring security
to an Afghan force trained in part by the United Nations. But how
prepared is that force? And how accountable is the UN?
A series of
documents, exclusively obtained and published by Inner City Press,
reveals widespread corruption within the UN’s program in Afghanistan.
The UN Development Program (UNDP) routinely paid “ghost” soldiers and
made double payments to existing soldiers.
See sample documents here, here, here and here, exclusively provided to Inner City Press by now-former UNDP staff.
When confronted by
Inner City Press, the UN through UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s
spokespeople has stonewalled, saying that it will not answer until an
internal audit is completed – but they won’t say when
that audit will be finished, or whether it will be made public.
Meanwhile, an audit released earlier this year found that UNDP had
overspent its budget and muddied its financial records.
This comes after UNDP’s Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan scandal on which Inner City Press exclusively reported in 2012, here.
Without answering these questions, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark is on
the record campaigning to be the successor to Ban Ki-moon as Secretary
General.
The Free United Nations Coalition for Access (FUNCA)
is calling for open access to the UN and to UN documents. The UN
secretariat and its agencies are not bound by any Freedom of Information
laws, and have no fear of prosecution, due to legal immunity. This was
seen most recently when the UN peacekeeping force introduced cholera to Haiti – and was never prosecuted and did not even apologize.
This has created a
culture of unaccountability, which is on display every day at UN
Headquarters. On the Afghanistan issue, the Secretary-General’s Office
of the Spokesperson has been particularly arrogant, saying it would not
accept “artificial deadlines” then reading a canned statement from UNDP
that used an internal audit to justify not answering (see video here).
Journalists investigating the UN have little recourse.
Nobody supervises the world body. There is no system of checks and
balances to hold the UN to account, since powerful member states use the
UN for their own purposes. And sadly, most of the in-house media
covering the UN depends on friendly relationships with the Secretariat
for their coverage.
That’s why FUNCA
is asking for more independent journalists to take a look at UN
Headquarters and dig into the problems plaguing the UN.
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