U.N. Agency Provided $2.3M Worth of Equipment for Venezuela ? Or Did It?

Why did the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) buy $2,375,000 worth of walk-through airport body scanners for the radical leftist Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez? Or did the agency purchase the high-tech equipment at all? And if not, what happened to the $2.3 million?

According to UNDP, not only did the 2007 purchase take place, it was arranged in order to ensure “objectivity, transparency, efficiency” of the procurement in a country that, under Chavez, supports terrorists in neighboring Colombia and has aligned itself with sponsors of international terror such as Iran and Cuba.

According to UNDP spokesman David Morrison, the contract was awarded by UNDP on behalf of Venezuela’s national customs and taxation authority, after a free and open competition that guaranteed fairness and openness in the deal.

But according to UNDP internal documents examined by FOX News, things didn’t quite happen that way. In the confidential minutes of UNDP’s top headquarters procurement committee, the contract was awarded to a Venezuelan firm named Setronix C.A., without competitive bidding. The same waiver of competition is also cited in internal UNDP procurement records that finalized the transaction.

The highly reputable U.S. defense contracting firm that manufactured the 19 ProVision scanners procured by UNDP, L3 Communications, says that the only shipment of scanning machines it sent to Venezuela under UNDP auspices last year was for the country’s correctional system. A company spokesman said the firm had no information to add about any other Venezuela procurement involving UNDP.

United Nations Scanner Deal — Or Is It Scammer Deal? - April 04, 2008 - The mystery of the airport body scanners purchased by the United Nations Development Program for Venezuela is no longer just skin deep. FOX News questioned UNDP’s purchase of $2.3 million worth of airport walk-through body scanners for Hugo Chavez’s radical socialist government in Venezuela, in a story on April 1. Two days later, UNDP replied by posting a number of documents on the Internet, all of which raise new questions about whether the entire deal was a façade for a scam, and whether the scanners were ever shipped at all. Among other things, the number of scanners varies from document to document, the same purchase order has two different dates on two different documents, and the major document justifying the entire project has a termination date 3 1/2 years before UNDP approved the entire scanner purchase. Further, that project document never mentions airports or scanners at all. The documents posted by UNDP Thursday night further undermine its claim that the 2007 scanner purchase on behalf of a Venezuelan customs and income tax authority known as SENIAT was the result of an "objective, transparent, efficient" procurement exercise that emerged from a fair and open bid.

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