At a time when the #UN80 reform agenda is being used to justify abolishing posts, non-renewing contracts, and terminating staff in the name of financial austerity, it is extraordinary that a single staff member could have defrauded the Organization of $721,756 over ten years without earlier detection.
Buried on page 16 of the latest annual report of the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) to the General Assembly (A/81/319, Part I) is a finding that should make every Member State question what exactly the UN means when it speaks of financial discipline and accountability. I suspect few delegates have the time to scrutinize these reports line by line, but perhaps they should start with paragraph 49.
A single UN staff member defrauded the Organization of $721,756 through 45 fraudulent education entitlement claims between 2016 and 2025.
Yes, you read that correctly.
For almost ten years, the UN continued to process and pay these claims through an administrative system entrusted with protecting its financial resources. And now, while the Organization is busy identifying which staff members it can no longer afford to employ, perhaps someone could explain how it managed to afford nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in fraudulent payments to just one.
The UN has spent months promoting UN80 as an exercise in efficiency, accountability and responsible management of increasingly scarce resources. Staff members are expected to accept the consequences of that exercise, however devastating those consequences may be for their livelihoods and families.
Surely, before asking staff to pay the price for the Organization’s financial difficulties, its leadership owes them an explanation of how its own financial controls could fail so spectacularly.
This OIOS finding should serve as a lesson for the UN80 reform agenda: the Organization appears far more efficient at eliminating staff positions than at detecting fraud against itself.
I have addressed an open letter to Ms. Fatoumata Ndiaye, Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services, requesting specific answers concerning investigation 1804/25, including the administrative failures, the responsibility of those who approved the claims, the measures taken following the investigation and the recovery of the funds.
The staff members whose contracts are being terminated in the name of financial austerity deserve to know how this happened. So do the Member States being asked to finance an Organization that failed to detect a single staff member’s fraudulent claims amounting to nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.
My open letter to the Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services is published below.
Nadine, did you first ask whether the investigation was fairly conducted?