How Much Discretion? U.N.'s Anti-Poverty Program Wants Unlimited Spending Power
By George Russell
Fox News
August 20, 2008
The United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s anti-poverty agency, which systematically ignored its own financial rules and regulations while funneling millions of dollars to North Korea, wants to give its chief operating officer the right to make out discretionary checks of unlimited amounts, without normal budgetary approval.
That’s up from the current limit of $50,000 which can be dispersed without regulatory oversight.
UNDP argues that the new ability to write such checks without normal authorization would only bring its discretionary powers into line with those currently exercised by other U.N. programs, like UNICEF and the World Food Program (WFP).
The problem is that at the Rome-based WFP, the use of the same unlimited discretionary authority to pay off job-eliminated contract employees was condemned just last year as a $90 million abuse of authority and a violation both of U.N. payment rules for contractors, and of fairness to longer-term employees.
The condemnation was issued by the only budget oversight committee that includes the entire membership of the U.N. It was ignored both by WFP bureaucrats and by the WFP’s 36-nation governing executive board.
UNDP’s desire to have the same unlimited discretionary power for its No. 2 bureaucrat, Associate Administrator Ad Melkert, is contained in support documents for the next meeting of its own, similarly-sized executive board, which meets in New York City from September 8 to 12.
The discretionary money is known in technical parlance as “ex gratia” funds, which UNDP describes as “payments which are made where there is no legal liability to UNDP, but the moral obligation justifies making such payments, which are in the interest of UNDP.” The question of what defines that interest is left to top administrators to decide.
The case UNDP cites in asking for the approval for sweeping new check-writing powers is humanitarian: payments to families of staffers killed in the bombing of the U.N.’s headquarters in Algiers last December. In all, 17 U.N. employees were killed in the blast, including seven affiliated with UNDP.
According to the submission, UNDP says it was unable to make “ex gratia” payments to some of the Algiers victims’ families due to the current $50,000 limit. “UNDP should be able to show compassion when addressing such cases,” the submission argues.
(Although UNDP does not say so in the papers it has presented to its executive board, the organization’s insurance policy provides only $180,000 in death benefits for full time staffers and $80,000 for local consultants.)
