In October 2015 the United Nations faced another bribery scandal. New York federal authorities arrested John Ashe, who had been the UN General Assembly president in 2013-2014. He was charged with tax dodging and getting bribes worth $1.3 million from Ng Lap Seng, a business from China. Mr. Ng was also charged in the case.
Ng Lap Seng, promoting the construction of UN Center in Macau, donated $1.5 million to the South-South Cooperation Office, the official UN body focused on evolution of the relationships between southern countries. The United States authorities recognized this transaction as suspicious, because it was unclear why South-South Cooperation started partnership with Mr. Ng, who had been identified as the source of hundreds thousands of dollars illegally transferred to the Democratic National Committee in 1998. Therefore, the investigation was started regarding this transaction as well as how this money was further used by the official UN body (Fassihi & Matthews, 2015).
This case is just the particular one in the series of corruption scandals, which have hit the UN recently. The previous large-scale was connected to the UN oil-for-food program. The companies involved in the program transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to the UN officials including the oil-for-food program chief Benon Sevan in order to get business preferences (The Economist, 2005).
That scandal led to creation of the UN Procurement Task Force, which were to control and audit US contracting operations. Though the newly created UN body showed some successful criminal convictions and even identified $630 million involved in fraudulent transactions, it was closed in 2009 as soon as it started investigating high-level and influential diplomats. The fact was that these diplomats could actually influence the amounts of the UN Procurement Task Force funding. And when investigations started becoming a threat of them, they immediately cut funding under the pretense of the fact that they don’t have obligation to follow UN ethical codes and the must follow only laws of their home country (Fassihi & Matthews, 2015).
The similar pretext was a ground of not launching UN internal investigation in the abovementioned John Ashe case. This actually seems not a good practice, because it causes further damage to the UN reputation, which is already tarnished due to numerous previous scandals connected to the bribery in the UN as well other cases like children sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in Bosnia, Congo, Haiti and Sudan (Jordan, 2004).
Though UN has a formal reason not to solve its own corruption problems, experts familiar with current situation in the United Nations, suppose that investigations should have been started even if there are no formal obligations to do this. Robert M. Appleton, who was a head of the UN Procurement Task Force before its disbandment in 2009 is strongly convinced that the UN is not able to involve high-level diplomats into investigation process, because in fact it is distraction of attention from the real scale of corruption in the organization. He is sure that the usage of the United Nations funds is a thing which should be strictly controlled (Fassihi & Matthews, 2015).
Therefore, the UN programs connected with significant funding amount should be a subject of independent audit. Alongside with this possible corruption cases should be thoroughly investigated. It also seems reasonable to develop the legislation mechanism, according to which the UN officials responsible for fraudulent activity like the one disclosed in October 2015 can be arrested and judged independently of their citizenship.
In case these actions are done the UN can become less vulnerable to corruption and consequently reinstate itself as the center of international negotiations and decision making process as well restore its authority of the place, where member countries can freely express their opinions on different issues and eventually find appropriate solutions to any kinds of global problems.
References
Fassihi, F., & Matthews C. M. (2015). U.N. Says It Can’t Probe Graft Scandal. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-says-it-cant-probe-graft-scandal-1444265786.
The Economist (2015). Corruption at the heart of the United Nations. The Economist. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/4267109.
Jordan, M. J. (2004). Sex charges haunt UN forces. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1126/p06s02-wogi.html.
