The Witchfinder and the Secretary General

From Guardian Comment is Free
22 October 2007

To great fanfare, last year the UN's witch-finding inspectors, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), announced that they had nailed a Singaporean staff member, Andrew Toh, for corruption. To considerably less fanfare, this month the Singapore government revealed that the UN's internal courts had cleared Toh of any substantial wrongdoing - and found that the OIOS had harassed him and spent millions of dollars investigating him without any success on the main charges.

Instead of punishing his persecutors, last Thursday UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon suspended Toh for two months without pay and demoted him. This is like fining a witch at the stake for fire-raising, or as the indignant
Singapore foreign ministry colourfully put it: "Toh is like a pedestrian deliberately hit by a speeding car as he crosses the street, only to be cited for jaywalking as he lies injured, while the culprit goes unpunished".

Almost two years ago, under pressure from the US, the UN sent more staff to help the OIOS investigate the UN's procurement office. The new procurement task force began in January 2006, with its head a former assistant district attorney from Connecticut, and its first official act was to put Toh on leave while they investigated. Toh was been ground down in a Kafkaesque process ever since. When they could not find any evidence to back their original corruption charges against him, they expanded their investigation and demanded that he submit details of all transactions in his family exceeding US$10,000, as well as any gifts received exceeding US$250, for the previous decade.

The UN's joint disciplinary committee has now cleared Toh of fraud, but obviously leery of being accused of wasting the UN's resources, reprimanded him for negligence in filing his financial disclosures.

This should be no surprise to anyone who has watched the OIOS at work. For years, American politicians and media wanting to score quick political points have raised allegations of "waste, mismanagement and corruption" at the UN. Instead of rebutting false charges, successive secretary generals have pandered to them, throwing accused staff to the wolves. Any UN staff member who comes under investigation, particularly from an American accusation, is presumed guilty, even if like Toh he is proven innocent.

During the Iraq "oil for food" storm, the Volcker commission's release of OIOS's internal reports fed the media frenzy, helped along by malicious leaks from investigators. Half-digested, with no notice taken of any rebuttals from the "accused," a typically memorable charge was that the UN's border inspectors had wasted money by being on station at the Iraqi border months before the food and oil trade was up and running. But, as an exasperated staff member pointed out, that was because the UN security council had ordered them to be there. And if they were not, doubtless, he suggested, there would have been a nitpicking OIOS report complaining about their failure to comply with the council's instructions.

In 2001 I wrote a story about a company using the planes that it was contracting to the UN to smuggle "blood diamonds" from central Africa. I approached OIOS for comment. They did not return my calls, but internal sources told me its response was not to investigate the company, but to investigate who had leaked me the story. Even professionals inside its ranks have quit and tried to blow the whistle on the OIOS's methods.

The UN needs an adequate justice system that exonerates the innocent, punishes the guilty and dissolves the OIOS and its procurement task force, the acting head of which - despite being guilty of this wasteful and malicious vendetta against Toh - is confidently expecting to be promoted next year. The Wall St Journal is already campaigning to retain the task force in the face of Singapore's objections.

The UN panel on Toh's claims recommended that OIOS and the UN should review their rules on investigations and "bring them in line with the judgements of the United Nations administrative tribunal and the existing international instruments on human rights".

That is long overdue. The impunity that used to be enjoyed by perpetrators in the UN has been replaced with a lack of accountability and a total impunity by the OIOS, whose malicious incompetence is aimed more at glory in the Murdoch press than at justice.

Since the UN has been quick to remove the diplomatic immunity of any staff member suspected of criminal behaviour, not least anyone fingered by the Fox-hunters of the far right, Toh wants reciprocation. He wants the secretary general to lift the immunity of his persecutors so he can sue his persecutors for the egregious abuses of natural justice and established procedure which the UN's own courts have found.

By the time the UN appeals procedure rules that Toh's suspension and demotion were wrong, and awards him substantial compensation, his persecutors will be safely drawing a substantial salary. Ban Ki Moon has made the promotion of human rights a priority of his administration. He should begin inside his own organization by ignoring US pressure and putting a stop to the persecution of Toh.

The Witchfinder and the Secretary General

Well, here is more on the Andrew Toh case and the latest about throwing UN staff to the Foxes.

click on Guardian Commment is free

Blood Diamonds and UN Witchhunts

This appeared in the London Independent the day after September 11 and the WTC so it did not get much interest.. except for the UN's OIOS which immediately conducted an inquiry into who had leaked me the story. They refused to speak to me.

The relevance will show in postings I will be doing later about the Andrew Toh witch-hunt at the United Nations


UN flights `linked to Congo diamond smuggling'.



By Ian Williams in New York.

12 September 2001

The Independent




UNITED NATIONS investigators are examining allegations that flights used by a UN contractor have been smuggling diamonds out of Congo. The charges could be embarrassing for the UN, which has energetically condemned the plunder of the mineral-rich country by foreign powers involved in its protracted war. UN officials flew to the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, last week to investigate the allegations, which surfaced during an inquiry into billing practices by the contractor, ES-KO, which is registered in Monte Carlo. Local officials in the UN mission in Congo allege that charter flights used by ES-KO, which they had engaged to provide and ship rations for their operations, may have had, on their return trips, shipments "of questionable content as referred to in the report of the UN Panel of Experts on illegal exploitation of DRC natural resources". UN sources confirm that this means diamonds, but such is the sensitivity of the issue that no one wants to put the word into print.



ES-KO, which derives most of its revenues from UN catering and supply operations, is a commercial company owned by two Italian brothers, Ennio and Enzo Zanotti. It has been in the news before, in the 1980s, when it was linked with allegations of shipping toxic waste to west Africa. Those claims were not proved. The current allegations arose out of an investigation into how ES-KP billed the UN for the services of a local handling company. In the course of looking into how the shipments were dealt with, UN officials had their suspicions aroused when they discovered that the aircraft involved, using a UN call sign, was also carrying other goods for other parties - including the alleged "shipments of questionable content". The first inquiry into billing practices focused on almost $25,000 (#17,000) in air royalties allegedly paid to the government of Congo. The UN had, as usual, negotiated a tax-free deal for its shipments with the DRC, and local officials used this and the fact that ES-KO could only produce a hand-written receipt for the alleged taxes to refuse payment. UN legal advisers called for the investigation by UN headquarters into the company and its contract "on the legitimacy of using such a carrier in the prevailing political situation".



The issue is sensitive because the UN has inveighed at all levels against diamond smuggling. It is a major source of finance for the bloody conflicts across central Africa, which the UN has been called upon to intervene in time and again. The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has personally spoken out strongly against the illicit trade, which stretches from Sierra Leone in west Africa, to Congo, Angola and Mozambique. The UN's five-man panel of experts concluded in July last year that the exploitation of the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo by foreign armies had become systematic and systemic. The experts urged the UN Security Council to declare a temporary embargo on the export of diamonds and other minerals from or to Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, "until those countries' involvement in the exploitation of the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo is made clear".