Part 20 (2/2)

The Communist Party in Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church, and several Russian oil companies all received oil allocations.

In all, 270 separate people received oil vouchers permitting them to buy Iraqi oil at a discount and then sell it at the higher market price, pocketing the difference.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, who investigated the program at the behest of the UN, said, ”Corruption of the [oil-for-food] program by Saddam and many partic.i.p.ants could not have been nearly so pervasive with more disciplined management by the United Nations.”13

Forty countries and 2,250 companies paid bribes to Saddam under oil-for-food to receive favorable treatment.

No UN official has been criminally prosecuted for bribes or any other crime stemming from the oil-for-food program.

This is the record of corruption at the United Nations. Who can doubt that if the Law of the Sea Treaty is ratified, the billions in oil royalties that flow through the UN will not open the door to the same kind of systematic and universal graft that characterized the oil-for-food program?

New opportunities for corruption-without-consequence are emerging from the initiatives for global governance. If the UN is to administer a vast fund to redistribute wealth to the third world, tax oil royalties from offsh.o.r.e drilling, regulate the Internet, and tax financial transactions and the like, the kleptocracies that make up much of the UN members.h.i.+p can only lick their chops in antic.i.p.ation.

But won't the UN enforce rules against corruption as it acquires more power? History indicates that it will do nothing at all to clean up its act.

Indeed, the tendency toward corruption-and the blind eye the UN leaders.h.i.+p turned to it-that was evident in the 1990s only accelerated with the start of the new millennium.

In 2005, a huge scandal ripped the UN Procurement Department, which was responsible for all purchases made by the organization. Alexander Yakovlev, the head of the department, pled guilty to federal charges of wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering. Working with his fellow Russian Vladimir Kuznetsov, the head of the UN Budget Oversight Committee, he tipped off bidders for contracts with inside information in return for bribes. Paul Volcker estimated that the Russians made off with $950,000 in bribes and helped contractors win more than $79 million in UN contracts.14

A year later, the FBI broke up a drug ring operating right out of the UN mailroom that had smuggled 25 tons of illegal drugs into the United States in 20052006.15

But what is exceptional about the Yakovlev case and the FBI investigation are not the crimes the UN officials committed, but the fact that they were punished. The case against Yakovlev was brought by the US attorney for the area in which the UN is physically located. The UN not only has never prosecuted one of its own for stealing or anything else, it totally lacks the ability even to try to do so. Such prosecutions of UN officials as the US attorney can bring are the only means of holding UN personnel legally accountable. But these cases are rare because the UN organization systematically hides evidence and permits its delegates to conceal their larceny behind diplomatic immunity.

Volcker complained about what he called ”the culture of inaction” that surrounds the UN's efforts at reform. Indeed, the anti-corruption agency at the international body, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OSIS), can only investigate UN agencies with their permission. Its funding for these inquiries must come from the budgets of the agencies it investigates. David M. Walker, comptroller-general of the United States, said that ”UN funding arrangements constrain OIOS's ability to operate independently... . OIOS depends on the resources of the funds, programs, and other ent.i.ties it audits. The managers of these programs can deny OIOS permission to perform work or not pay OIOS for services.”16

Outrage at UN corruption-and the permissive att.i.tude of the secretary-generals toward it-has led to several attempts in recent years at cleaning up the mess. But each has been thwarted, often by the delegates to the General a.s.sembly from third world nations that don't want their personal candy store to close.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hired former US attorney Robert Appleton to investigate corruption in the United Nations. Appleton did a very good job, uncovering ma.s.sive bribery, larceny, bid-rigging, money laundering, and the like all over the world body. He was rewarded for his services by the General a.s.sembly, which defunded his unit, fired him, and blackballed his staff from ever working for the UN again.

All his findings were swept under the UN rug. Appleton said, ”As far as I am aware, significant follow-up [to my investigations] was only made in one case, and that was after significant pressure-including from ... Congress.”17

Appleton told Congress that ”the most disappointing aspect of my experience in the [UN] organization was not with what we found, but the way in which investigations were received, handled, and addressed by the UN administration and the way in which investigations were politicized by certain member states.”18

Another anti-corruption agency, the UN Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), was similarly crushed after it also exposed corruption, particularly in the notorious Procurement Department. The General a.s.sembly's Senior Review Group fired the director of the JIU and replaced him and his staff with more compliant and less thorough investigators.19

It's not healthy to investigate UN corruption. On December 11, 2011, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon crippled the UN Dispute Tribunal, a judicial body he himself had established two years before. He stripped its judges of the capacity to protect whistle-blowers. The judges-recruited from outside the UN bureaucracy-charged that the secretary-general who had appointed them was trying to ”undermine the integrity and independence” of their court.

Ban Ki-moon stripped the tribunal of its ability to order its decisions to be enforced while they were under appeal to the United Nations Appeals Tribunal. Key was its ability to protect those who had come forward with information from dismissal or demotion. The secretary-general also took away the court's subpoena power and denied it the right to demand that he ”produce a doc.u.ment or witness in response to charges of unjust treatment.”20

This is the same secretary-general who will be given the power to appoint judges to the Law of the Sea Tribunal to adjudicate disputes between the US and other nations should we ratify the LOST.

How can we ever trust him with the power to name the arbiters of the law of the sea and of the resources that lie beneath the waves?

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