UNembarrassed

Business as usual at the UN:

Nearly two years after a FOX News story led to the discovery of widespread corruption in the United Nations’ multi-billion-dollar procurement department, revelations in a U.S. federal courtroom last week by one of the corrupt U.N. officials testifying against another show that the rot continues.

Signs of the problem spilled out in testimony that a gigantic Russian-based air transport company paid at least $700,000 in “consulting” fees to a United Nations procurement officer, in an arrangement involving at least 10 to 12 U.N. contracts awarded to the firm.

The value of the contracts is unknown — and the U.N. refuses to divulge it — but based on fragmentary evidence obtained by FOX News from U.N. Web sites and other sources, the total easily runs into tens of millions of dollars.

Both offering and accepting inducements of any kind is a violation of U.N. regulations, which supposedly results in punishment not only for the employee but also for the contractor, who is, according to the rules, liable to be cut off from further U.N. contracting.

Yet even after those revelations, delivered by the man who took the money, the company that broke those rules, Volga-Dnepr Airlines, can still be found on a list of firms currently authorized to do business with the United Nations.