AT THE UN, MORE THAN JUST VIALS OF PHOSGENE. True, they found WMD, vials of phosgene, in the New York office of the UN--but that is only the latest example of UN messups:

Take, for example, the problems for U.S. security posed by something that sounds on the face of it a lot less alarming than phosgene: U.N. stationery. This summer, U.S. federal agents arrested a Russian official working at the United Nations in New York, Vyacheslav Manokhin, who is alleged in the federal complaint to have been part of a scheme misusing the U.N. and UNDP letterhead to help “numerous non-United States citizens” fraudulently enter the U.S. At least some of these letters were signed in the names of U.N. officials who did not exist. A pretext for entry to the U.S. was to attend conferences, many of them at the U.N. in Manhattan. (Manokhin has pled not guilty).

Also in New York, federal investigations into corruption in the U.N. procurement department have led to a guilty plea and two jury-trial convictions over the past two years from U.N. officials — including the conviction this March of the former head of the U.N. budget oversight committee, Vladimir Kuznetsov, for conspiring to launder kickbacks on procurement deals. Some of those funds were moved through a bank branch located for the convenience of United Nations staff inside the U.N. headquarters complex.

And this March, we learned that the U.N. Development Program, without alerting U.S. authorities, had been keeping a stack of counterfeit $100 bills for more than a decade in its North Korea office safe (having tried without success to return them to the North Korea state bank from which they were obtained, according to a UNDP spokesman). This news emerged as part of a still-spreading scandal in which U.S. officials have alleged, based on confidential U.N. documents, that the UNDP had been funneling hard cash, and possibly weapons-related goods, to the rogue, nuclear-bomb-building North Korean government of Kim Jong Il.

Then there was the mother of all U.N. inventory fiascoes, the 1996-2003 Oil-for-Food program for Iraq, in which abysmally deficient U.N. oversight provided cover that was exploited by U.N.-sanctioned Saddam — under the noses of U.N. inspectors and authenticators and overseers and monitors and managers — to bust sanctions, bank billions, and buy weapons via a worldwide network of smuggling and corrupt deals.

Back in January Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon promised a full external inquiry into the UN.
Better late than never.

Technorati Tag: UN and Phosgene.