UN's No-Bid Contractor in Darfur an "Inside Job," Ex-Auditor Says, Congo Dodges

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, November 28 -- For two days, the UN has declined to answer whether Pacific Architects & Engineers, the Lockheed Martin subsidiary given the $250 million no-bid contract for Darfur peacekeeping infrastructure, currently holds the contract for air field support to the UN's Congo mission, MONUC. Tuesday, Inner City Press was told that the June 2007 MONUC Headquarters Committee on Contracts minutes it obtained and published were superseded by a change in "contract strategy" in October 2007 -- just when the UN signed the no-bid Darfur contract with PAE.

   Meanwhile, the now-retired Office of Internal Oversight Services auditor of PAE's past contract with MONUC, whose findings resulted in both a scathing report by the UN's Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions and in his being pulled out of the Congo told Inner City Press on Wednesday that favoritism for Los Angeles-based PAE by senior peacekeeping officials, who he emphasized are both American, goes back to at least 2001. "It's an inside job," Edwin Nhliziyo said in a phone interview. He states that he provided the evidence the lead to the statements about PAE in the ACABQ report, including in Paragraph 89 that

"the choice of PAE/Daher over the lowest bidder raises many troubling questions. It appears to have been rejected owing to several factual and interpretation errors committed during the technical evaluation and points-based rating exercise. It was claimed that the lowest bidder had not provided a list of equipment for any of the seven airfields to be serviced. This was erroneous: the lowest bidder had provided a detailed list of equipment with supplementary information...Other errors related to technical evaluation of services to be provided for emergency/crash rescue services and hours of operation. These errors led to awarding a significantly lower rating to the lowest bidder."

            Edwin Nhliziyo, who audited this contract in the Congo, goes further, and says that the irregularities began with then-head of UN peacekeeping's Field Administration and Logistics Division pushing for PAE to get a MONUC air field contract, despite an offer by South Africa to provide the services. Once PAE got the contract, South Africa continued to get paid for providing services, that PAE was also paid for, without doing any work. In one sample instance, according to Nhliziyo, PAE charged the UN for 28 employees to man two fire engines on an airfield which saw only two flights per week.

            Nhliziyo conducted his investigation for OIOS, which in turn did not want to issue the audit. The underlying information made its way to ACABQ, and the above-quoted report resulted. Amazingly, UN peacekeeping continued contracting with PAE, and as Inner City Press reported earlier this week, went out of its way to try to award PAE a 2007 to 2010 Congo contract, despite having submitted a bid double the size of another qualified bidder. Even this windfall wasn't enough for PAE and its parent Lockheed Martin - they then tried to triple the size of the contract they were awarded. PAE had done this before, as the ACABQ report found (in Paragraph 99).

Lockheed Martin's PAE: rolling in UN money

             Tuesday, Inner City Press asked if PAE had been given the Congo contact, and was told an answer would be given. It wasn't so on Wednesday this follow-up:

Inner City Press: yesterday I had just asked a pretty simple question on whether this PAE contractor, the one that was chosen 'no-bid' in Darfur, in fact got the Congo air field services contract?  That seems like a fair, factual question.  Can you say if they got that contract?  It's a new question.

Associate Spokesperson:  About air field support?

Inner City Press: Correct

Associate Spokesperson:  Yes, regarding that, what we were told by procurement is that this is a closed case, since it was never acted upon by the Headquarters Committee on Contracts.  It was submitted to that Committee in June of 2007, but was not reviewed by the Committee, as the contract strategy changed between June and October, when the Contracts Committee made a final contract recommendation to the Controller.  So the case was determined to be irrelevant.

Inner City Press: So who got the contract?  Who is providing air field support in Congo, for how much, given that the minutes are public, showing that they…  You see what I mean?  That was the question.  Who's doing it?

Associate Spokesperson:  I've given you the information I have, which is, again, to recap, that the contract strategy did change and the information that you had raised pertains to a case that was determined to be irrelevant given the change of that.

Question:  And can I…  About a week ago it had been said that the Department of Field Support, or someone, would come and brief about these PAE issues.  Is it still… when is that going to take place?

Associate Spokesperson:  It's probably not the Department of Field Support, because they're not the ones who handle.  What I have on that is that the Procurement Division stands ready to explain any UN Secretariat procurement activities, in particular, the rules of contract award, for which the UN applies best value for money in the case of a request for a proposal.  As we said yesterday, we will wait for the debates on the budget to conclude, in the Fifth Committee, and then... where the Secretariat will answer questions raised by Member States, and then after that we can get a briefing for you by someone in procurement.

            Beyond the refusal to state who has the UN's Congo air field contract (this on top of the refusal to say how much PAE has been paid to date on the no-bid Darfur contract), the statement that it's "not the Department of Field Support, because they're not the ones who handle" is directly contradicted by the UN's own head of DPKO Jean-Marie Guehenno, who Tuesday outside the Security Council answered Inner City Press' question about the UN's justification of the Darfur no-bid contract by saying, "that's between DFS and the organs of the General Assembly." There is also the April 2007 letter from DFS head Jane Holl Lute to Warren Sach, pushing PAE for a sole source contract. This, by the way, ran afoul of a recommendation ACABQ had made about PAE in the Congo, in Paragraph 87:

"The Committee is of the opinion that the role played by the Field Administration and Logistics Division in the evaluation and award of the contract contravenes a basic procurement principle. In the Committee's opinion, the Field Administration and Logistics Division should not have been so actively involved in advocating a particular recommendation. To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, departments that prepare requisitions for services and products are barred from recommending providers of those products and services."

            And yet the head of DFS, the successor to the Field Administration and Logistics Division, expressly named PAE, to the Controller, for a sole source contract in April 2007. Wednesday, sources told Inner City Press that the six months $250 million contract may already have been extended. This exploration will continue, watch this site.

* * *

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

  Because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com

Search WWW Search innercitypress.com

Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service.

            Copyright 2006-07 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com -