Posted on 12/21/2007 1:12:34 PM PST by khnyny
UNITED NATIONS — The General Assembly is preparing to put an early end to an in-house panel that has exposed more than $600 million in tainted United Nations contracts and is currently investigating an additional $1 billion in suspect agreements.
A budget committee of the General Assembly is scheduled to vote as early as Friday on a resolution that would force the panel to close down its operations in six months.
The effort to scuttle the panel is not a budget matter so much as a political one, and it represents the continuing suspicion developing countries have about international intervention in their affairs.
The fight has been led by one country, Singapore, which contends that a United Nations official from there has been treated unfairly in an investigation. The resolution also recommends that the panel itself be investigated for the way it has treated officials and diplomats.
In its effort to curtail the task force’s work, Singapore succeeded in winning over the powerful Group of 77, an assemblage representing the developing world that has grown over the years to 130 nations.
The threatened shutdown of what has been a penetrating inquiry comes at a time when the United Nations is still recovering from the findings of mismanagement and corruption in the oil-for-food program made by Paul A. Volcker. Mr. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, said in the 2005 report that the United Nations suffered from a “culture of inaction.”
The six-month cap would effectively finish off the investigative unit, said its director, Robert Appleton, a former assistant United States attorney in Connecticut. Mr. Appleton also served as special counsel to the inquiry into the program under which Iraq was allowed to sell some of its oil, despite United Nations sanctions, to meet the needs of its civilians.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What a surprise - corruption as usual.
Kofi Anan was up to his elbows in this to the tune of billions and was allowed to walk away to live the rest of his life like a king. The world is an ugly place.
We are bookmarking it for future use though.
Must have been getting too hot for Kojo Annan, Kofi’s son.
Kind of like the Warren Commission in the death of JFK - one of the FBI guys who had lost his position sat on the panel to decide that Oswald was the shooter. But a book that came out in 2003 states that the FBI flew a former member of the OAS out of Dallas on the day JFK was shot... ergo --> France hit man, Mertz, was more than likely the shooter for hire (all tied up in JFK's assasination and coup of Viet Nam's then president, Diem, French Mafia, and American Mafia... heroin traffic was interupted when Diem was assasinated... and then one wonders why so many don't trust the government.
Money buys protection!
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK. OR NOT. And you are sooooo right about the timing.
Ping.
Why do we still fund them?
Power corrupts. The Foxes are guarding the Global Hen House.
I wonder if Henry Kissinger still thinks global government is preferable to a system of cooperative nation states?
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