| UN Somalia Corrupt
Contracts with Insider IDed
again to Inner City Press by
Whistleblower
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
UN GATE,
Nov 24 – How corrupt
is today's UN under Antonio
Guterres? Today's example is
his mission in Somalia, about
which his spokespeople
Stephane Dujarric and Melissa
Fleming refuse all Press
questions. Inner City Press
has asked them, and others,
about a sex abuse case against
the UN there. Now this, from a
UN whistleblower sent to Inner
City Press:
Dear Mr.
Lee: We are
seeing so many posts on ICP and in the media
these days, citing UN corruption,
coverup, HR irregularities, and generally
bad management. ... A closer examination
will show that over an extended period of
time the managerial approach has been to
ensure that this contract was continuously
extended and nothing changed. A lot
can be accomplished by doing nothing.
Without any other plausible explanation,
this amounts to a Programed Substantial
Waste of Member States
Resources.
But its more than this
Mr. Lee. Additional contracts in the same
mission have been exceptionally extended
and well past their final dates
also. The common thinking is that
this was done to enable the mission to pay
out many millions in new construction work
to existing vendors, which itself was
accomplished with some questionable
procurement actions, including: what
really was the requirement given the late
stage of the
mission? I read in
an earlier ICP post that the present
Director has long standing family ties
with the Somalia establishment, so maybe
this has something to do with it.
Maybe its just collective will or neglect
by senior staff? Who knows, it will
never be truly investigated, or if it is
investigated that will simply be to cover
it up. Its incredibly sad for the
UN, and that should not be the case.
All staff employed by
the UN are international civil servants
and tasked to implement the wishes of the
Members States, while at the same time
protecting the Member States financial
interest. Ironically, the same
well-paid individuals are the architects
of
waste.
There are two certainties with the
replacement contract when it hits:
It will be a fraction of the cost for the
same service, and the same vendor will be
involved.
But why is
this, and so many other issues of fraud,
waste and abuse happening in today’s UN
field missions, and elsewhere? There
are a number of reasons why accountability
and good governance are a fading UN
memory. Here’s just
one.
Seven or eight years ago the UN conducted
merit-based staff selections, which were
tempered with consideration to
geographical distribution and a few other
attributes. Admittedly, it was far from
perfect, and what one would expect in any
publicly-funded closed organization that
has no financial bottom line and loose,
shifting
deliverables.
But a number of years back the UN made a
notable shift from merit-based staff
appointments. The prevailing opinion
among staff today is that appointments are
done with little, or no consideration to
merit, but chiefly to meet
organizational-set numerical
targets. During any recruitment
process, few are asking if the selected
person can actually do the job before
final button is pushed by the hiring
authority.
The complaints that are
filling your inbox are from staff that
have grown weary of the lack of
accountability, acute waste, abuse of
office, opportunistic HR empires, and
generally poor leadership that prevails
today. Internally, they have
no where to turn.
We'll have
more on all this. No answer from UN
Spox Dujarric on this, or nomination of Elise Stefanik. Keep
the info coming.
***
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