"Ex-staffer blasts UN chief in memo; Ban portrayed as controlling" by John Heilprin, Associated Press | July 23, 2010
UNITED NATIONS — A portrait of Ban Ki-moon as a secrecy-obsessed UN chief seeking to wrest control of internal investigations emerges from a blistering 50-page confidential memo by his former oversight chief.
The unusual memo by Inga-Britt Ahlenius, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press, describes Ban as more concerned with preventing news leaks than with releasing possible criminal evidence to prosecutors. It also details how she fought Ban’s efforts to set up a competing “new investigative capacity’’ within the United Nations.
The Swedish former auditor general also stated that the secretary general improperly refused to allow many of her office’s audit reports to be made public, or to allow nearly all of its confidential investigative reports, with evidence of potential criminal wrongdoing, to be referred to outside prosecutors.
“Such secretiveness serves us poorly,’’ Ahlenius wrote to Ban....
The UN’s ability to police itself for major fraud and corruption since the disbanding of an elite anticorruption UN Procurement Task Force in 2008 is of concern to the United States and other major donors, who worry about the billions of dollars they contribute to improve the lives of the world’s poorest people....
We don't seem to worry when it goes to war-profiteers.
