WASHINGTON -- A preliminary audit report has found that the United Nations Development Program and three other UN agencies operating in North Korea routinely violated UN rules by hiring local staff through the government, making payments in hard currency and failing to independently monitor the projects they funded.
"Even though this was only a preliminary review, the audit did confirm our concerns," Mark Wallace, deputy U.S. ambassador to the UN, said.
A statement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, who called for the audit in January under pressure from the U.S., said the preliminary report "identifies practices not in keeping with how the United Nations operates elsewhere in the world." But he insisted that the audit does not back up U.S. charges that UN funding on a large scale was systematically diverted to North Korea's regime.
The audit, conducted by the internal Board of Auditors at the UN, based its preliminary findings on interviews with UN staff and on reviews of documents in New York. But the auditors did not have access to documents or staff in North Korea, leaving many of their conclusions murky.
Ban said a follow-up visit to North Korea is required in order to get more detailed information. But the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has already rejected such a visit, and critics of the UN said they doubted it would happen.
The report said that from 2002 through 2006, the four UN agencies it reviewed -- UNDP, UNICEF, the Population Fund and the Office for Project Services -- spent $72.5 million on programs in North Korea, of which UNICEF accounted for $55.2 million and UNDP for $13.2 million.
With the exception of UNICEF, it said, these offices made payments within North Korea in foreign currency "without requisite authority." Many countries are reluctant to supply North Korea hard currency it could use for illicit purposes.
