Search Results for “UNDP”

June 10, 2007

State: N. Korea Spent UN Funds to Buy Property in France, Britain, Canada

The UN has released the results of a preliminary audit report on the UN Development Program’s operations in North Korea. Those operations were shut down following revelations that the UN gave the regime cash with few conditions and little accountability, and essentially became its “ATM machine.” Among the juicy revelations is that the UN was keeping a large sum of counterfeit “supernotes” in a UN safe. The UN now concedes that the UNDP violated UN rules: A statement by UN...

Uncategorized

May 22, 2007

Anju Links for 22 May 2007

* Freedom House has released an extensive new report on North Korea’s concentration camps. The author is David Hawk, who wrote “The Hidden Gulag.” * John Bolton is leading the charge against Agreed Framework 2.0, and his latest effort is this piece at OpinionJournal.com. He doesn’t quite accuse Chris Hill of conspiring to launder money — I did — but he does a good job of explain our dizzying series of retreats on the Banco Delta issue. Thanks...

Anju Links

March 16, 2007

N. Koreans May Have Given U.N. Counterfeit $100 Bills

[A] new twist now emerging in the Cash-for-Kim scandal is that while the UNDP has been giving Kim real money, Kim’s regime may have been handing over counterfeit banknotes to the UNDP–which apparently had a stack of counterfeit $100 bills sitting in its office-safe in Pyongyang. [National Review] We owe this revelation to — who else? — Claudia Rosett.

"United" Nations/Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/WTF?

March 12, 2007

UN Official: ‘We were being used completely as an ATM machine for the regime.’

Since it looks like we’re about to unfreeze a few million in North Korean funds from Banco Delta Asia, it’s worth remembering that another easy source of cash, representing about as many millions in annual income, has just been abruptly terminated. The United Nations Development Programme office in Pyongyang, North Korea, sits in a Soviet-style compound. Like clockwork, a North Korean official wearing a standard-issue dark windbreaker and slacks would come to the door each business day. He would take...

"United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid

March 5, 2007

Maybe He Should Have Called It a ‘Slam Dunk’

[Update: John Bolton weighs in at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. Bolton reads Joseph DiTrani’s remarks similarly to how I read them, although those of an “Anonymous Senior Official” are much more nefarious. Do not miss. Bolton continues to do great public service as a private citizen by focusing on the essential issues of inspection and verification, and then nails why all pieces of this framework join at that point, with pneumatic strength and precision: [I]t is precisely this...

Washington Views/WMD

January 22, 2007

Ban Ki Moon Orders Review of U.N. Programs

Update 2: Reuters reports that Ban is now backtracking and saying that the new audits will focus only on programs where the financial practices are shady. Monday’s U.N. statement said Ban would assign auditors only to U.N. funds and programs “in countries where issues of hard currency transactions, independence of staff hiring and access to reviewing local projects are pertinent.” Audits would be “simultaneously carried out in select cases of countries” identified by the funds and programs, it said. Funding...

"United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Washington Views

January 19, 2007

The UN’s Latest North Korea Scandal

I’ve often criticized the UN World Food Program (WFP) for the inadequate monitoring of its food aid program in North Korea, but as it turns out, there was something I didn’t know then: compared to the UN Development Program’s (UNDP) operations there, the WFP’s were a paragon of accountability. Ever since the days when the disgraced team of Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park began advising and representing Kofi Annan on North Korea, the UNDP has been funneling millions of dollars...