On
UN Pension Fund, Investments
in HSBC and Shell Smell Bad to
Many, UN Dodging
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
April 25 – With UN Pension
Fund problems including late
payments and $3.4 billion in
foreign exchange costs leading
to the departure of Secretary
General Antonio Guterres'
previous representative to the
Fund Carolyn Boykin, who
issued a gag
order to staff not to
leak to Inner City Press,
problems remain. Among them
are investments in Shell,
despite its record in for
example Nigeria's Ogoniland,
and in HSBC, laundering of
Mexican drug cartel funds
among other dubious practices.
The UN is dodging - we'll have
more on this. Back on
Halloween 2017 we first wrote
of Boykin's replaced Sudhir
Rajkumar, triggering much
feedback into which, despite
the restrictions and threats
by Guterres' Department of
Public Information, we are
digging. Now this: the UN
Office of Internal Oversight
Services audit of the UN
Pension Fund's implementation
of the so-called Integrated
Pension Administration System
(IPAS) found that because "the
benefit calculations performed
in IPAS were not always
reliable, PES staff manually
calculated and verified them,
with the resultant impact on
efficiency." Paragraph 28 of
the audit, which Inner City
Press put online here,
on Patreon.
Now on December 14, this:
"This message is sent by UN
staff unions on behalf of the
UN participant representatives
to the Pension Board.
We would like to share with
you two recently-issued OIOS
audits on the UN Pension Fund.
The procurement audit focuses
on a $2.2 million contract
with consulting firm
PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC)
and notes that of the total,
$1.8 million was not spent on
services specified in the
contract. Thus costs could
have been inflated due to lack
of competitive bidding for the
$1.8 million of services and
greater use of partners
costing $475 an hour. It
appears that procurement rules
may also not have been
followed. The second audit
covers the implementation of
the new system for paying
pensions, called IPAS, whose
poorly managed implementation
left newly retiring staff with
no income for more than nine
months. It notes that a number
of important elements with
IPAS, including relating to
payments for widows and
orphans, were noted as
critical, even as the system
was reported to the Board and
external stakeholders as being
ready to implement. It could
be argued that given these
issues were known prior to
implementation, they should
have been addressed, which
would have to a large extent
avoided the payment backlog.
Both audits are in line with
the report of the UN Board of
Auditors. This comes shortly
after the UN Appeals Tribunal
ruled that the Fund acted
illegally in excluding two
board members that had been
elected by UN staff and who
were known to be critical of
the performance of Fund CEO
Sergio Arvizú. UN
Secretary-General António
Guterres has been requested by
the Pension Fund Board to
extend the contract of CEO
Arvizú by three years. Given
the abundance of information
showing our pension fund being
managed outside the rules, we
ask Mr. Guterres to seriously
consider whether an extension
would be in the interests of
ensuring management
accountability at the UN. -
Mary Abu Rakabeh, Ibrahima
Faye, Ndeye Aissatou Ndiaye
Bernadette Nyiratunga Ian
Richards Michelle Rockcliffe
UN participant representatives
to the Pension Board" Who will
be held accountable for this?
Or for this? On November 9,
Inner City Press first
reported and asked the UN
about this: a UN Office of
Internal Oversight Service
audit has found at least $1.8
million in unauthorized
spending, and much PCW work
being done outside the
contours of the agreed
contract, at higher cost to
the UN. We've put the audit
online,
here, on Patreon, with
these questions: How much
pension fund money was
overspent on the 75 percent of
services that were not bid
for? (If there had been
bidding for the other
services, there may have been
less use of $475 an hour
partners. Having signed a
contract for low-cost
accountancy services, how did
PWC accept to provide
high-cost consultancy services
without a new contract being
signed? Was there collusion
between PWC and Pension Fund
staff? Doesn't the buck stop
with, or in this case flow
from, the CEO? And this: the
six UN Participant
Representatives have asked
Guterres to NOT reappoint the
current CEO of the pension
fund, Sergio Arvizu. We've
published the letter on
Patreon, here.
Already, the Board has
proposed only a three year and
not a five year reappoint. The
six UN Participant
Representatives say it should
be zero, based on: "a poorly
implemented new IT system with
no contingency planning,
leaving retirees without
income, many for more than
nine months; attempts, since
blocked by the General
Assembly, to remove OIOS as
the Fund’s auditor; attempts
to remove the Fund from the
UN’s administrative oversight
by creating new
staff and financial rules;
attempts to circumvent rules
on procurement and receiving
gifts. It should be noted that
the current payment backlog to
widows, orphans and retirees
still numbers in the
thousands. For almost three
years the CEO has refused to
meet with staff
representatives at the Fund
despite multiple attempts by
staff. The CEO has
misrepresented good faith and
constructive efforts made by
the UN’s Department of
Management to resolve the
situation involving two staff
of the Fund’s
Secretariat elected to the
Board." On this last, the "UN
Appeals Tribunal last week ruled
illegal a decision by the
pension fund’s board to
exclude two of the six members
that you, as UN staff, elected
back in April." We'll have more
on this, and on what Guterres
does.
On October
19 Guterres replaced Boykin
with Sudhir Rajkumar. Since
then staff tell Inner City
Press of proposals to make up
for bad management, as
follows: raise the early
retirement age from 55 to 60,
raise the general retirement
age for the younger staff, and
require the staff to put in 20
years instead of 15 before
they can recoup what the UN
committed to pay for their
pension. As noted, despite
restrictions continued and new
Kafka-esque threats
by the UN Department of Public
Information under Alison
Smale, we are digging more
into this. We can be contacted
via the encrypted e-mail
address on Patreon, here.
On
February 2, when Inner City
Press asked UN spokesman
Stephane Dujarric about
Boykins gag order, he claimed
UN staff misinterpreted it.
From the UN transcript:
Inner City Press:
You'd sent me an answer about
the so-called hospitality log
at the Pension Fund.
That was fine. They
published it. Since
then, the employees of that
unit have all received a, what
they call a gag order from Ms.
Carolyn Boykin telling,
reminding them that only the
Secretary-General can speak
for the Organization.
And they see it as basically
they thought that they…
Spokesman: I don't… I,
you know, people can interpret
whatever they want in whatever
way they want. My
understanding is that what was
circulated are the current,
the current media guidelines,
which actually say that people
should be able to speak in
their areas of, their area of
competency.
Inner City Press: So,
what level of UN employee is…
is authorized to disclose if
they think they saw… they see
corruption? They took
this as very much a threat to
punishment.
Spokesman: I'm sorry
they interpreted it that way.
Inner City Press: What
does it mean?
Spokesman: Mr. Abbadi.
We'll stay on this.
Inner City
Press continued its series on
January 26 with this from the
UN Joint Staff Pension Fund,
which whistleblowing staff
tell Inner City Press
maintains a "Hospitality Log"
of its wining and dining of
brokers, leaving General
Service staff to (mis) fill in
the information.
The
whistleblowers tell Inner City
Press of a directive from Sandhya
Peerthum,
citing Ban
Ki-moon's
corrupt
boondoggle
UMOJA:
"With the
implementation
of UMOJA,
assistance
from EO has
been
drastically
reduced.
Assistants can
help schedule
interviews,
print PHP,
book rooms,
take notes,
enter guests
in workspeed
for access
etc. They can
better support
the SIO’s by
taking on more
administrative
roles to free
up the SIO’s
time so that
they can focus
on their
respective
portfolios.
Also, trading
has been
absorbed by
Vicky so there
is a lot of
excess
capacity."
The staff
whistleblowers
tell Inner
City Press
there is a
problem with "accurate
record keeping including the
Hospitality Log – Hospitality
log is the responsibility of
the P-staff (Investment
Officers) who wine and dine
with brokers, advisers and
other investment
professionals. So how would a
GS staff know when and where a
P-staff would be enjoying
lunch, dinner and beer (and
what else) on any given date
or time to update the
hospitality log? This is
totally illegal"
And needs
investigation. The UN's
holdover Spokesman Stephane
Dujarric answered only two and
a half of Inner City Press' 22
questions, and on January 25
and January 27 left the
briefing room as Inner City
Press was still asking
questions. Then on January 27,
this:
From: UN
Spokesperson - Do Not Reply
[at] un.org
Date: Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at
12:35 PM
Subject: Your question on the
Hospital Log of the UN Joint
Staff Pension Fund
To: Matthew.Lee [at]
innercitypress.com
Cc: Stephane Dujarric [at]
un.org
We have the following
information provided by the
UNJSPF:
The purpose of the Hospitality
Log is to record events which
Investment staff attend as
part of their official
functions, which may include
meetings, conferences, meals
or receptions. These
events are to the benefit of
the Fund, as they enable
investment staff to network
and gather information which
is helpful to their
research. As most of the
Fund is internally managed,
attendance at such events is
not unusual.
The Investment Management
Division (IMD) has a Gift and
Hospitality Policy, which was
reviewed by the UN Ethics
Office and the Pension Fund’s
Audit Committee. This policy
requires events to be logged
and it requires them to be
reasonable and customary in
cost. Additionally, the
Investment Management Division
conducts annual ethics
training."
After this
spin, Carolyn Boykin,
representative of the
Secretary General (that would
be, now, Antonio Guterres, "reminded"
staff that they have no right
to speak to the Press, that
everything should be
through... Dujarric, who
stonewalled Inner City Press
on Ban Ki-moon's and Cristina
Gallach's corruption, threw it
out of the Briefing Room and
then the UN.
There is a
need for an entirely different
approach, and new officials,
at the UN. Watch this site.
In
Washington executive orders
are being prepared to cut up
to 40% of the US'
contributions to the UN, and
to fully cut funding to
entities blamed for violation
of human rights.
One
obvious question is whether
the total denial of due
process for whistleblowers -
already part of US law - and
investigative press which covers
UN corruption
constitutes such a violation.
We'll have more on this.
***
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