Kowabunga

More corruption and scandals with that darling of the Liberal-Left, the United Nations. IN this new episode, we learn that the UN Development Program was bilked of ten of millions of dollars by that other darling of the Liberal-Left, Kim Jong Il, dictator of North Korea. FoxNews has this on the issue:

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.

The head of the UNDP during the time that this scamming took place was none other than Mark Malloch Brown, who has been extremely critical of President Bush's (and John Bolton's) demands that there be greater transparency in UN operations. One has to wonder why, with all the reports of abuse and corruption, from the "Oil for Food" prior to the invasion of Iraq, and the "Food for Sex" scandal, where UN Peace Keepers demanded sex in exchange for providing food aid in the Congo, that Malloch Brown would oppose greater transparency in UN operations.

The push for greater (or, better still, total) transparency and reform of the UN should continue. I suspect it will grind to a halt as the U.S. Congress is controlled by Liberal-Left Democrats who believe that the UN can do no wrong.

Audits of the UNDP (and other agencies) are considered to be "management tools" of the UN and are denied to those governments that actually pay the bills of the UN. Making these audits available to the United States and other governments as a matter of routine, instead of hiding them from those that supply the funding, is the first step to reforming the UN and ending the current "culture of sorruption" that has been the normal "modes operandi."

Tags:

United Nations Corruption UNDP