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ISTANBUL — The United Nations called on Tuesday for a new global reserve currency to end dollar supremacy which has allowed the United States the "privilege" of building a huge trade deficit. "Important progress in managing imbalances can be made by reducing the reserve currency country?s 'privilege' to run external deficits in order to provide international liquidity," UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, Sha Zukang, said.

Tirana, Dec. 18, 2008 (AENews) –Two independent groups from the European Union and the UN have discovered that international officials in Kosovo mismanaged more than 400 million euro, reported the German daily “Die Welt” on Wednesday. According to the alleged reports, EU funds that had been destined for Kosovo’s energy sector, were misappropriated by UN officials in Kosovo, in conduit with local politicians. The investigation conducted by the EU Anti Fraud Office, UN investigators and the Italian Financial Police has found more than 50 cases of financial embezzlement. In twelve of these cases there is proof of criminal liability. According...

BANGKOK, Thailand - As much as 25 percent of cyclone relief aid in Myanmar is being lost because of the military government's foreign exchange system, a United Nations official said Friday. Dan Baker, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Myanmar, said he is concerned that the losses could upset donors who have already shown a reluctance to fund the relief effort following the May 2-3 cyclone that killed 84,537 people, according to the government. "This is a big issue. This is a big concern," Baker said. "The donors aren't going to give us money if they know they will (lose) a...

Iraq to sue oil-for-food suspects The Iraqi government has said it will file lawsuits in US courts against firms and people suspected of illegally profiting from a UN programme. The UN oil-for-food programme allowed Saddam Hussein's government to sell oil in order to buy humanitarian supplies during UN sanctions from 1996-2003. An inquiry found that 2,200 firms paid $1.8bn in bribes to Iraqi officials. Meanwhile, a US army report has said there was little planning for events after Saddam Hussein was overthrown. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement that the legal action was to recover damages and...

Iraq plans to file suit in a U.S. court against the United Nations for alleged corruption in the oil-for-food program, Iraqi legal sources said Friday. The United Nations established the program in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell oil to global markets in exchange for food and humanitarian supplies without generating revenue to rebuild the Iraqi military in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. The program ended shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the Coalition Provisional Authority assumed responsibility for humanitarian functions. An investigation by the congressional investigative body the Government Accountability Office found loopholes in the...

Critics are calling for the resignation of a U.N. investigator who supports Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and thinks the U.S. government may have planned the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, investigates alleged Israeli violations of human rights law for the U.N.’s Human Rights Council. But the former Princeton professor would also like to investigate whether “some sort of controlled explosion from within” destroyed the Twin Towers, he told FOXNews.com. “I do think there are questions that haven’t been answered, questions about the way...

A group comprising survivors and relatives of the victims of the massacre in Srebrenica have called on a court in The Hague to lift the United Nations' immunity. The six thousand Bosnians want to bring charges against the UN and the Netherlands for their role in the fall of the Muslim enclave. But that can only happen if the judge in The Hague makes legal proceedings against the UN possible. The judge will consider the request and deliver a ruling in mid-July. The Muslim enclave in Srebrenica fell on 11 July 1995 into the hands of Bosnian Serb troops who...

Report Shows U.N. Development Program Violated U.N. Law, Routinely Passed on Millions to North Korean Regime Wednesday, June 11, 2008 By George Russell E-Mail Print Share: NEWS ANALYSIS — After more than two years of accusations and probes into the operations of the United Nations Development Program in North Korea, a weighty report finally reveals how routinely, and systematically, the agency disregarded U.N. regulations on how it conducted itself in Kim Jong-Il’s brutal dictatorship, passing on millions of dollars to the regime in the process. The 353-page report, by a three-member “External Independent Investigative Review Panel” appointed by UNDP to...

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The United Nations on Thursday feted 60 years of peacekeeping around the world, with its overstretched "blue helmets" in high demand but somewhat tarnished by sex abuse and corruption scandals. "Today, we have more than 110,000 men and deployed in conflict zones around the world," UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in a message to mark International Day of Peacekeepers. "They come from nearly 120 countries, an all-time high, reflecting confidence in United Nations peacekeeping," he said. And Jean-Marie Guehenno, the Frenchman who has led the UN peacekeeping department (DPKO) for the past eight years, also paid...

Sexual abuse of children as young as six by aid workers and United Nations peacekeepers has continued unchecked despite repeated promises to stamp it out, according to a 12-month investigation. More than half of the children interviewed in three countries, Ivory Coast, South Sudan and Haiti, knew of cases of forced sex with aid staff or peacekeepers. The assaults were often in return for the very food or protection supposed to be provided to the vulnerable in a crisis. Similar allegations have dogged UN missions since the organisation sent peacekeepers to Cambodia in the 1990s. However, today's report, from Save...

Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme. Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say. The criticism centres on the UN's clean development...

In the world of U.N. flim-flam, some might call it a junket, some might call it a farce, some might call it a political hit job in an election year - and they'd all have a good case. Here comes Doudou Dienne of Senagal, dispatched to America as a special investigator by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (yes, the outfit where the delegates of China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia et al. meet regularly to define human rights right down into the sewer, slam Israel, and then repair to the Mercedes and BMW's waiting to ferry them off to dinner.) Diene is...

NEW YORK - A former United Nations procurement official convicted of accepting bribes was sentenced Tuesday to eight years and a month in prison. Sanjaya Bahel, 57, was sentenced after a jury found he had helped a friend win $100 million in U.N. contracts in exchange for a huge discount on two luxury Manhattan apartments and cash. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas P. Griesa also ordered Bahel to forfeit $103,500 and his interest in the apartments, near the United Nations headquarters. Bahel was chief of the U.N.'s Commodity Procurement Section from 1999 to 2003. Before he was sentenced, Bahel apologized....

Tsunami reconstruction funds worth $US500 million are being lost to fraud and corruption because of the failure by the United Nations to implement its own anti-fraud measures. This claim is made by the UN’s former deputy director of investigations, Frank Montil, a former ASIO officer who for a decade was the deputy director of the UN’s internal watchdog unit, set up to investigate fraud and corruption within the UN and its agencies.

NEW YORK - A United Nations employee was arrested Monday on charges that he and two others used U.N. stationery in a visa fraud scheme, prosecutors said. Vyacheslav Manokhin, a U.N. employee based in Manhattan, was accused of helping numerous non-U.S. citizens enter the country illegally by providing fraudulent documents so they could obtain visas to attend conferences that either did not exist or which they did not attend. The charges in the scheme, which prosecutors said began in April 2005 and was continuing, were outlined in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Manokhin, 45, was...

An employee at the United Nations headquarters in New York has been arrested on suspicion of visa fraud. Russian national Vyacheslav Manokhin, 45, is accused of using his position to provide false documents to support US visa applications since April 2005.

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VIENNA, Austria — U.N. standards for selecting peacekeepers are too low, and soldiers from countries whose armies are suspected of abuse should not be considered for peacekeeping duty, the U.N.'s chief anti-torture investigator said. U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak also told the Austrian news magazine Profil in an interview for Monday's editions that the United Nations should reconsider forming its own professional standing army. Concerns about the quality, training and ethics of peacekeepers are growing as developing nations with questionable human-rights records increasingly send troops for international peacekeeping operations, Nowak said.

UN confirms inquiry of sexual abuse cases in Ivory Coast 23/07/2007 18:05 ABIDJAN, July 23 (AFP) The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast confirmed it was investigating cases of sexual abuse of Ivorian women, including young girls, by some Moroccan soldiers. "There was an internal investigation which proved the facts, but we are waiting the results of the full investigation led by our internal affairs services, which will confirm the facts," UN spokeswoman Margarita Amodeo told AFP. "There are minors among the victims concerned," she said. The United Nations at the weekend suspended a Moroccan peacekeeping unit based in...

The United Nations says it is rushing an audit team to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to probe recent allegations of gold trafficking by some of its peacekeepers there. Indian UN "blue helmets" have been accused of trafficking in gold with rebels of the chiefly Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in eastern DRC, according to UN documents and witnesses. And Pakistani UN troops based in the north-eastern Ituri area in 2005 have been embroiled in similar allegations of trading in gold and guns with Congolese militia they were meant to be disarming. UN under-secretary general...

By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. Congress are accusing the U.N. Development Program of firing a whistle-blower connected with the agency's North Korea program, a target of the Bush administration. Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who last week sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said Artjon Shkurtaj, chief of operations in North Korea in 2005 to 2006, was dismissed for criticizing the UNDP. On Thursday, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida also sent a letter to Ban, urging him to intervene to protect Shkurtaj, who she said had uncovered "significant irregularities." The Bush administration...

NEW YORK (AP) — A former United Nations official was convicted Thursday of charges that he helped a friend secure $100 million in U.N. contracts in exchange for a huge discount on two luxury Manhattan apartments and cash. Sanjaya Bahel, 57, chief of the U.N.’s Commodity Procurement Section from 1999 to 2003, had maintained his innocence since his November arrest.

NEW YORK - Discounted apartments and cash were given to a former United Nations procurement official and two other U.N. workers got nights with prostitutes to help secure $100 million in U.N. contracts, a businessman testified Tuesday at a bribery trial. The witness, Nishan Kohli, provided many of the details at the heart of the government's case against Sanjaya Bahel, who was chief of the U.N.'s Commodity Procurement Section from 1999 to 2003. Bahel, 57, is charged with bribery, wire fraud and mail fraud. Kohli testified in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that Bahel was so helpful to the Kohli...

An unpublished United Nations report says the government of Sudan is flying weapons and heavy military equipment into Darfur in violation of Security Council resolutions and painting Sudanese military planes white to disguise them as UN or African Union aircraft. In one case, which the report illustrates with close-up pictures, the letters "UN" have been stenciled onto the wing of a white-washed Sudanese armed forces plane that is parked on a military apron at a Darfur airport. Bombs guarded by uniformed soldiers are laid out in rows by its side. The report says that, contrary to government denials, the freshly...

Paul Wolfowitz's conduct at the World Bank is outrageous and he deserves to be fired—although, let's face it, any woman who would sleep with him does deserve a raise—but let's not be romantic about his Bank opponents. To hear it from them, once Wolfie is out the door, the Bank will get back to its core mission. If by core mission they mean rewarding corrupt, Third World elites and making the poor poorer, I think they'd be correct. There are few organizations that have done more harm to the people of the planet than the World Bank. During the 1960s...

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 a manila envelope stuffed with cash--a healthy portion of the UN's disbursements for aid projects in the country--and leave without ever providing receipts. According to sources at the UN, this went on for years, resulting in the transfer of up to $150 million in hard foreign currency to the Kim Jong Il government at a time when the United States was...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Ministry poured scorn on a U.S. court's conviction of one of its U.N. diplomats for money laundering, saying on Thursday it had grave doubts about the trial. Vladimir Kuznetsov, 49, who once chaired a U.N. budget committee, was found guilty on Wednesday of helping launder more than $300,000 in bribes and taking a share of the money. He faces up to 20 years in prison. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement that Russia had been amazed by his arrest, which it considered unnecessary for the investigation. "During the process and trial, the...

Fresh allegations of corruption within the United Nations have surfaced in a confidential audit report that claims the 2003 election of the current chief of the U.N. weather agency was manipulated. The report, obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, centered around payments to government delegates at the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization, which coordinates the study of the world's weather and climate. WMO instructed Maria Veiga of Portugal, an independent auditor who wrote the report, to investigate the financial irregularities in 2003. Three years later, she was fired for what the agency described as "serious misconduct." The auditor, however, said...

The first clue that the U.N. Development Program in Pyongyang needs to be looked at came from someone in the American intelligence community, which is more interested in this dangerous weapons-proliferating corner of the "axis of evil" than in other far-flung countries where the United Nations's "good offices" operate, a source has told me. On Friday, UNDP officials reacted with their typical defense: shooting in all directions. As a former American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, told me yesterday, "They always blame an American first." American-controlled agencies do it, too, UNDP officials said. Their board of directors, which...

Excerpt - UNITED NATIONS (AP)--The U.S. accused the U.N. development agency of funneling millions of dollars in hard currency to North Korea with little assurance that leader Kim Jong Il used the money to help his people instead of diverting it to other activities including nuclear weapons, according to U.S. officials and letters obtained Friday. U.S. deputy ambassador Mark Wallace charged that the agency's program in North Korea operated "in blatant violation of U.N. rules" for years. He demanded an immediate external audit of the program going back to at least 1998 that would focus on U.S. concerns that Pyongyang...

"UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 19 — Ban Ki-moon, the new secretary general, called today for outside examination of all United Nations activities after a published report that the United Nations Development Program in North Korea was making unaccountable payments in hard currency to local staff members and the Pyongyang government. Mr. Ban’s sweeping order sought “an urgent, system-wide and external inquiry into all activities done around the globe by the U.N. funds and programs.”

The former United Nations oil-for-food chief was charged Tuesday with bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in the scandal-tainted humanitarian program. The charges against Benon Sevan, 69, of Nicosia, Cyprus, were contained in a rewrite of an indictment stemming from the scandal over the operation set up from 1996 to 2003 to permit the Iraqi government to sell oil primarily to buy food and medicine for suffering Iraqis. The program was designed to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions, but authorities said it was corrupted by bureaucrats, oil tycoons and Saddam Hussein after the former Iraqi...

Members of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Sudan are facing allegations of raping and abusing children as young as 12, The Daily Telegraph has learned. The abuse allegedly began two years ago when the UN mission in southern Sudan (UNMIS) moved in to help rebuild the region after a 23-year civil war. advertisement The UN has up to 10,000 military personnel in the region, of all nationalities and the allegations involve peacekeepers, military police and civilian staff. The first indications of sexual exploitation emerged within months of the UN force's arrival and The Daily Telegraph has seen a...

UNITED NATIONS — Kofi Annan steps down as secretary-general at midnight today, leaving behind a global organization far more aggressively engaged in peacekeeping and fighting poverty — but struggling to restore its tarnished reputation. Taking office six years after the Soviet Union collapsed, Annan, 68, helped preside over a decade that saw the world unite against terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, then divide deeply over the U.S.-led war against Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. At a Millennium Summit in September 2000, he spurred world leaders to adopt a blueprint to wage a global war on poverty and bring...

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday recommitted the world body to "zero tolerance" of sexual exploitation and abuse by a minority of UN peacekeepers as he opened a high-level conference on the festering issue. "Acts of sexual exploitation and abuse by both civilian and uniformed UN personnel continue," the outgoing secretary-general told a gathering of more than 100 senior leaders from the world body, NGOs, UN member states, academics and victim advocates. "There have been crimes such as rape, pedophilia and human trafficking. My message of zero tolerance has still not got through to those who need to hear it...

Australia shows how a real Oil-for-Food investigation is done. ___ At United Nations headquarters, Secretary General Kofi Annan likes to imply that the Oil-for-Food era is over (“If there was a scandal” was his locution earlier this year). But Down Under, that landmark U.N. scam is right now all over the headlines. On Monday, Australia’s Cole commission released the findings of its year-long inquiry into some $220 million in kickbacks allegedly paid by the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) to Saddam Hussein’s U.N.-sanctioned regime under Oil-for-Food. In a nutshell, the inquiry has cleared the Howard government, but recommends pursuing possible criminal...

War In The Middle East: U.N. peacekeepers may have done more than just look the other way as Hezbollah created its armed state within a state. The blue helmets may have served as Hezbollah's military intelligence. Real-time battlefield intelligence is a keystone of 21st century warfare, especially when you're up against a terrorist enemy that has had six years to construct hardened underground bunkers and tunnels from which to fight while not having to obey the rules of war. The situation gets complicated and your task becomes harder when that real-time intelligence is being provided to that enemy, Hezbollah, by...

The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) is investigating new allegations implicating UN peacekeepers in the "sexual exploitation of minors," it has said. "MONUC has received allegations about the existence of a major prostitution ring involving minors, close to a large concentration of Congolese soldiers and Blue Helmets (UN forces) in South Kivu, (in the) northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo," the UN mission said in a statement Thursday. The statement did not mention the nationalities of the peacekeepers implicated, but the spokeswoman, Sylvie van den Wildenberg, said the region had UN troops from India, Pakistan,...

U.S. officials shut down a ring that’s smuggled tons of khat -- an illegal East African stimulant -- into this country over the past year and a half. The drugs seized have a street value of some $10 million, and the proceeds reportedly helped finance Somali warlords. According to the federal indictment, the ring used U.N. diplomatic pouches to smuggle the narcotics into the United States. Osman Osman, a Somali clerk in the U.N. mailroom, is believed to be the leader of the operation. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan protested the U.S. government’s actions in the case. “These accused individuals were...

UN ambulance picking up fighters in Gaza Strip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqGjz7iJTns&">

I'm certain that Israel hit that UN observation post in southern Lebanon this week by mistake. I'm less certain that this is a good thing. Perhaps Israel should have hit the post by design. Much as one grieves for the innocent observers, the UN as a whole is a worse enemy of Israel than Hezbollah. Maybe bombing it by mistake was the military equivalent of a Freudian slip. I can hear a sharp intake of breath. It's the Well-Meaning Reader sitting up, scandalized. Jonas has really gone wacko this time. He's way over the deep end. Well, in for a...

July 28, 2006 -- What's this? Another scandal at the United Nations? Alas, it is so. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is so busy hectoring the United States and its allies on their supposed moral shortcomings, he cast a blind eye to the international drug-trafficking operation that was being run out of his mailroom. Say this for Annan: On his watch, the United Nations has become an equal-opportunity corrupter of the first order: Fraud, sleaze and criminality

A U.N. employee used U.N. diplomatic pouches to smuggle illegal drugs as part of a ring that brought 25 tons of contraband into New York in the past year and a half, federal prosecutors and the FBI said yesterday.

Haifa, Israel (CNSNews.com) - The four United Nations peacekeepers killed in an Israeli attack on their outpost were required to stay at that post "until they were ordered by the [U.N.] secretary general to withdraw," said a member of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization on Wednesday. But the peacekeepers apparently never received such an order, despite the fierce cross-border fighting that erupted in southern Lebanon two weeks ago. The four peacekeepers -- from China, Austria, Canada and Finland -- had taken security precautions and were in a shelter under their bunker when they were killed, said Wicki Dieter, the...

UN peacekeepers have abandoned at least 20 babies fathered with poverty-stricken Timorese women, an investigation has shown. The UN investigation has also uncovered a culture of cover-up, in which babies born to peacekeepers and sex crimes committed by its personnel over seven years have been kept secret because of a "fear of shame and embarrassment". A report on the investigation recommends that a policy of zero tolerance of sexual misconduct be enforced on UN staff. The report reveals for the first time babies born to UN peacekeepers have been abandoned without financial support. Their mothers have been stigmatised and in...

While the United Nations frames its next response to crisis in the Middle East, its last grand venture in that region--Oil for Food--has finally resulted in a guilty verdict in open court. Last Thursday, a high-rolling, globe-trotting South Korean businessman named Tongsun Park was convicted in the Southern District of New York of conspiracy to launder money and act as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Mr. Park's case is much entwined with the executive floor of the U.N. For years, he enjoyed extraordinary access to its top officials, complete (at least at one stage) with a U.N. grounds...

I spoke to a class of bright young folk at the community college in Henderson last week. The most intriguing questions are the ones that catch you off guard. Asked what I thought of the United Nations, I believe I stammered that the Founding Fathers were right: To the extent we need government at all, it's best to keep it as local as possible -- ideally, people you're likely to run into in the produce section of the supermarket so you can give them a piece of your mind. Obviously, it's hard to imagine a body as remote from accountability...

AN AGENT from South Korea who established a “secret backchannel” between a former UN Secretary-General and Saddam Hussein’s regime asked Iraq for $10 million “to take care of some people”, a New York court was told. Iraq set aside $15 million for the bribery scheme and sent $3 million in cash to New York in the year the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme was set up, it was alleged. It also heard that Iraq’s UN ambassador at the time believed that some of the money was destined for Boutros Boutros Ghali, then Secretary-General, although the prosecutors did not suggest that any of...

Saddam Hussein’s regime paid millions of dollars to a South Korean businessman to create a “secret backchannel” to top UN officials, including Boutros Boutros Ghali, then the UN Secretary-General, US prosecutors alleged today. The claim, formally naming Dr Boutros Ghali for the first time, was made at the start of the first US trial over the UN’s Oil-for-Food scandal. Prosecutors said that Tongsun Park received $2.5 million (£1.4 million) in cash plus promises of lucrative business deals in return for providing access to Dr Boutros Ghali and at least one other top UN official. “Tongsun Park has access at the...

Crisis management experts are calling for the creation of a "United Nations army"-an international rapid reaction force that could be deployed within 48 hours to intervene in emergency situations around the globe.Composed of up to 15,000 military, police and civilian staff, including medics, the proposed force would be recruited from professionals hired by the U.N. from many countries, and based at designated U.N. sites.