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In Wake of UN's
Darfur Contract with Lockheed, Promotions and Partying But No Peace
Byline: Matthew
Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
May
14 -- The Security Council was told on Wednesday that only 26% of the
approved UN positions for peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region have
been filled, due in large part to "harsh living and working conditions
in Darfur." Back on October 15, the UN quietly went public with a
no-bid $250 million contract with U.S.-based military contractor
Lockheed Martin for camps and infrastructure in Darfur. Now, seven
months later,
there has been little deployment, little work by Lockheed Martin, and
an
amateur assault on Khartoum by Darfur-based rebels which is seen as
undermining
future whole-hearted deployment.
In this context, and with the UN
Procurement Division making its presentation to the Budget Committee,
it is
time to review the Division's largest contract in years, the no-bid
contract to
Lockheed for infrastructure in Darfur.
Following controversy
about the lack of competition, a group of
contract managed from Spain has been brought in, to manage the
contract.
Even while the Office of Internal
Oversight Service belated conducts the General
Assembly-mandate investigation of
the "extraordinary measures" enacted for the Lockheed contract and the UNAMID
Mission, many of those
most involved in awarding the contract have been celebrating and
getting
promotions.
Dmitri Dovgopoly, since promoted to D-1,
kissed on left by Ms. Malle, now in Cyprus
Dmitri Dovgopoly, a Ukrainian national
intimately involved in the awarding of the contract, was subsequently
rewarded
with a promotion to the D-1 Director level. (Sources say he used his
influence
to procure another P-5 post in the Controller's unit for a close
friend.)
Chantal Malle, who was head of Procurement's
Darfur unit when the contract was awarded, was rewarded with a much
sought-after posting to Cyprus, as chief procurement officer there.
Paul Buades, the acting head of the
Procurement Division, involved not only in the Lockheed no-bid contract
but in
tweaking
the request for proposals at the request of the French mission to the
UN, is in limbo,
waiting for a D-2 promotion said to be stalled on the desk of Deputy
Chief of
Staff Kim Won-soo. While that accountability still hangs in the
balance, it
remains to be seen if the General Assembly's Budget Committee will
follow
through on the concerns it has expressed about the no-bid contract to
Lockheed
and other irregularities. Watch this site.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
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
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