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Tarnishing the reputation: unfortunately, UN employees too often fail to live up to the high ideals of the organization.

Article Excerpt
The UN General Assembly adopted its Convention against Corruption in October 2003. Some see a delicious irony in this, because the United Nations itself has a reputation for being a bit of a sinkhole of corruption.

The Cato Institute, a conservative American think tank, sees the UN as a sleazy outfit.

"There is abundant evidence that waste, fraud, and abuse are rampant throughout the UN system," it said in a report to the U.S. Congress. Even the organization itself acknowledges there is a problem.

An internal United Nations investigation in the 1990s found that:

* In Somalia, $369,000 (all dollar amounts in this article are in U.S. currency) was paid for fuel distribution services the contractor never provided;

* A project director of the UN Relief and Works Agency, which helps Palestinian refugees, kept $100,000 of agency money in his private bank account and failed to disclose a personal stake in the irrigation project under way; and,

* In Nairobi, Kenya a member of the UN Centre for Human Settlements arranged loans worth $98,000 for a company of which she had been a partner and with whose director she was "closely associated."

Since 1994, the United Nations has had a group that operates something like Canada's Auditor-General. The Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) keeps an eye open for any scallywags and ne'er-do-wells trying to rip off the organization....