The liberals’ United Nations is sure to not come under fire in the liberal media for this latest aid program—this one for the venerable Kim Jung Il, nutbar communist anti-American dictator of North Korea, which is shaping up to be not unlike the United Nations’ Oil-For-Saddam-Palaces anti-American program.
As if to prove that they don’t see anything wrong with this, there’s nothing about this story on the state-run media’s people’s web site at this time, nor at the liberalvision CTV site. This was found, shockingly, on FoxNews.com (they have video too; and no, I could not find it at CNN either).
U.S. State Department Reveals North Korea’s Misuse of U.N. Development Program Funds and Operations
NEW YORK — Has North Korean leader Kim Jong Il subverted the United Nations Development Program, the $4 billion agency that is the U.N.’s main development arm, and possibly stolen tens of millions of dollars of hard currency in the process?
According to a top official of the U.S. State Department — using findings made by the U.N.’s own auditors — the answer appears to be a disturbing yes, so far as UNDP programs in North Korea itself are concerned.
And just as disturbingly, the U.N. aid agency bureaucracy has kept the scamming a secret since at least 1999 — while the North Korean dictator and his regime were ramping up their illegal nuclear weapons program and making highly publicized tests of intermediate range ballistic missiles.
Nothing was disclosed even to the UNDP Executive Board, which oversees its operations and is composed of representatives of 36 nations — including the United States and, this year, North Korea itself.
That fact is sure to be a bombshell at the Executive Board’s regular annual meeting, which begins Friday and extends through Jan. 26. Among the main items to be discussed is the $18 million, two-year UNDP budget in North Korea.
Moreover, the period of scandal and secrecy in the UNDP’s North Korean operations coincided in large measure with the tenure of Mark Malloch Brown, most recently Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations itself, as administrator of the UNDP.
Malloch Brown took over the UNDP in July 1999, and stayed in his post even after August 2005, when he also became chief of staff for then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who at the time was reeling under the effects of the Oil for Food scandal.
In March 2006, Malloch Brown took over as Deputy Secretary General from Louise Frechette, who suddenly left the U.N. ahead of schedule, after her own role in Oil for Food became widely known and criticized. Only then did Malloch Brown give up his UNDP fiefdom.
Malloch Brown left the U.N. along with Annan at the end of last year and has since been harshly critical of the Bush Administration and its former ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, for their demands for greater U.N. transparency and reform.
And in the excellent FoxNews.com story, they’ve added this update:
UPDATE: In the wake of this FOX News story, Republicans in Congress have started to take up the issue. Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called on the UNDP Friday to end its project funding in North Korea. She further called on newly inaugurated U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to hold accountable officials who had allowed the North Korean regime to control UNDP programming. “This is yet another example of the abuses made possible by the lack of accountability within the U.N. system,” Ros-Lehtinen said.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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