THE United Nations likes to sell itself as a mentor of good governance. But the recent deep-sixing of a damning in-house report suggests it might more honestly advertise itself as an example of how to foster bad governance - and get away with it.
The report in question, labeled "strictly confidential," centers on alleged transgressions by longtime UN staffer Guido Bertucci, the director of - what else? - the UN good-governance office, the Division of Public Administration and Development Management.
In the 91-page document, dated May 13, the UN's anti-corruption task force accuses Bertucci of nepotism, favoritism, falsifying documents and diverting money in mismanaging a $2.8 million trust fund that was bankrolled by the Greek government.
Worse yet, the money was intended to enhance integrity in public service.
The UN investigators also accused Bertucci of obstructing their inquiry and urged UN management to consider holding him "personally accountable and financially liable" for any money misused, citing a figure of $34,000 in misspent funds. The Greek government wants hundreds of thousands in restitution.
So what has the UN been doing about this?
Waiting for it to melt away.
The Washington Times's Betsy Pisik broke the story on June 12, almost a month after the confidential report was finalized. She warned that sources familiar with the case expected the UN would do nothing stronger than place a note in the personnel file of Bertucci - an Italian who's due to retire at the end of this month.
A month later, Fox News reported this Tuesday that the Bertucci case has been "lying in limbo," waiting for action by Bertucci's boss - Undersecretary-General Sha Zukang, who runs the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Fox noted that Bertucci's retirement is imminent, and that the UN tends not to chase staffers who have left. With a little more stalling, it can simply misgovern this mess into bureaucratic oblivion.
There's plenty of precedent. Not a single UN staffer was fired over the multi- billion-dollar Oil-for-Food scandal. Benon Sevan, former head of the massively corrupt program, quietly left New York in early 2005 - well before Paul Volcker had completed his UN-authorized inquiry.
For months after Sevan skipped town, then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office continued to assure the press that Sevan was cooperating with investigators. By the time the Volcker committee weighed in with allegations that Sevan had taken payoffs on Oil-for-Food contracts, Sevan was ensconced in a penthouse apartment in his native Cyprus, beyond the reach of US extradition - on full UN pension.
In Cyprus he has remained, protesting his innocence, unwilling to return to New York to face a 2007 federal indictment. Nor has the UN made even a peep to press the point.
When Ban Ki-Moon took charge as UN secretary-general in January 2007, he promised a new era of better governance. On his UN Web site, he declares that he'll "make transparency and accountability the cornerstone of my tenure."
That cornerstone is looking more like a pebble on the UN lawn in the wake of the "cash for Kim" scandal that's unfolded on Ban's watch. It turned out that a parade of staffers working in North Korea at the UN's flagship agency, the UN Development Program, had violated UN rules for years by transferring millions of dollars to the rogue regime of Kim Jong Il.
The only person penalized in that scandal was the whistleblower: Artjon Shkurtaj found himself out of a job, with the UNDP denying him even the compensation urged by the UN's own Ethics Office.
"Reformer" Ban did nothing in that case, blaming a lack of jurisdiction within the UN's labyrinthine empire. Nor has he piped up about the Bertucci case, although he chairs the UN management team, of which Bertucci's report-burying boss, Sha Zukang, is a member.
Queried by e-mail about the status of the Bertucci report, Sha refused to comment, sending only a message via his office assistant: "Be assured that accountability is high on the management agenda . . ."
Reached by phone on Wednesday, Bertucci himself said he is innocent and that if anything he has done is a crime, then "maybe every single manager of the UN should be indicted."
The way governance at the UN is going, it's a thought.
(For more on the high-ranking UN official, China's Sha Zukang, who is now burying this scandal in his "In" tray, here's an item on Sha's prior incarnation, speaking on behalf of China, Iran, Burma, Zimbabwe etc, on the
UN's twisted Commission on Human Rights: )
