NEW YORK – The attempt to stifle whistleblower Anders Kompass’ exposure of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in Africa shows that senior management use the Office of Internal Oversight as their “private Gestapo,” a former  investigator at the world body says.

“Now all this is coming out in the open, very senior officials in the UN are fighting to keep their jobs. It appears increasingly likely that heads will roll,” Peter Gallo, who worked at the Office of Internal Oversight Services as a P-4 level investigator from 2011 till earlier this year, told the Italian Insider. He investigated cases at the Secretariat in New York and field investigations in UN missions overseas.

 In an interview, he explained why is it so hard for UN staff to report misconduct.

  “Misconduct by staff of the Secretariat is investigated by OIOS, but OIOS does not have jurisdiction over the funds and programs. If a complaint about UNICEF or UNDP is sent to OIOS, what happens is that a standard response is sent back saying OIOS has no jurisdiction. Full stop.”

  “I tried suggesting that we should pass these complaints sideways and if a report about, say fraud in UNICEF came in to OIOS, we should give it to UNICEF. No, this was not allowed, because of ‘confidentiality.’”

 “I suggested we should then at least explain to the complainant that they had sent it to the wrong agency, and direct them to whoever had jurisdiction.  This was not allowed, because it was not in the OIOS mandate or some such excuse ...”

 “The result was often that a complainant – especially an external complainant – interpreted this as simply that ‘the UN’ was not interested. Most of the time, they are right!”

 Within the Secretariat, there are Conduct & Discipline Teams in all the field missions. They filter a lot of complaints so they never reach OIOS, Mr Gallo says.

 “Just before the current scandal blew up, the UN was deeply embarrassed when it was revealed  they had misrepresentedthe number of Sexual Abuse and Exploitation cases, and the General Assembly had been misled.”  

 

 “The  Conduct & Discipline Unit is more concerned with massaging the numbers than about actually directing the investigators to deal with the problem – and the Kompass case has shows how the Organisation is more concerned with ‘protocol’ (for which read: ‘the chance to stitch up somebody we don’t like’) than they are about the victims of the most terrible abuse – or even about bringing anyone to justice for doing it,” Mr Gallo says.

 

 Too often form triumphs over substance at the world body, he adds.

 

 “There was a Joint Inspection Unit report a few years ago suggesting that all the different investigation agencies should be merged into one. That makes perfect sense, but there are people who are opposed to such rationalization:

 “-- It could mean fewer top jobs, especially as the current system has more heads of smaller operations.”

 “-- It is useful for people who are under investigation. They can leave one organisation and join another with a ‘clean’ record -- the different investigation departments don’t share information.”  

 

 “The first thing a complainant needs to know in advance is exactly who to report it to.

 

Then there is the favourite excuse; ‘there is no evidence.’”

 

 “Before an investigation into anything is going to be initiated, there has to be ‘probable cause’ or ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that a crime or some misconduct has been committed. That is normal and necessary, otherwise you would have the Gestapo mentality, investigating people just in case we find something when we do ... “

 

 “I experienced this. The UN Ethics Office – World Champions when it comes to finding an excuse not to investigate complaints – told me that my complaint was being rejected because it ‘did not contain any evidence.’  The regulation they were quoting said that a complaint must be supported by information or evidence to support a reasonable belief that misconduct had occurred.’”

 

 “It said INFORMATION OR evidence; and they conveniently ignored the ‘information or’ part. It was a 2,000 word complaint, from an investigator who was a qualified lawyer, and it did contain a reference to a specific e-mail from a named individual at a specific time on a specific date --  but the Ethics Office rejected it, saying it did not contain any evidence ...”

 

 Responses like this just annoy complainants, and convince them that nobody wants to investigate anything, Mr Gallo says. “This is only partly true; they want to investigate Jhaveri the Fuel Pump attendant, they do NOT want to investigate anyone senior, any of their friends, and they do not want to investigate anything that might be a can of worms … “

 

 “Variations on this theme include deciding (in advance) there are no witnesses -- a good excuse to close a case before it is opened.”

 

The other convenient excuse that OIOS was particularly fond of was that this was not “misconduct” but was instead a “management issue.”

 

 “This was used to turn a blind eye to anything involving any outside entity, such as a supplier,” Mr Gallo added.

 

 “One of the complaints I worked on was clearly evidence of a cartel operating in Iraq. The UN was being grossly over-charged for construction work.”

 

 “There was the question of why the UN was building anything when the US ground forces were pulling out of Iraq and were vacating thousands of office buildings, former Iraqi military installations and palaces.  I was very curious about why they were building anything when it should have been possible to take over something being vacated ... “

 

 “There was clearly a cartel in operation. The Mission failed to recognise they were being gouged. You did not need the brains of an archbishop to work out that somebody (in the Engineering Section or elsewhere) was getting a kickback from the contractors so as not to see this.”

 

 “There was no doubt the UN was being seriously ripped off, and at least ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that someone on the inside was both facilitating this and benefiting.”

 

 “I wanted to investigate it, but someone above me insisted it was a management issue.  They often do this to reject any cases involving a contractor – which means that any UN staff member taking bribes from contractors is relatively unlikely to get caught.

 

 “By UN logic, of course, there is no evidence of any corruption, and we know this because we have never found any ... but we have never found any because we deliberately don’t look, but that’s not important because we know there isn’t any because we have never found any.  That makes sense.”

 

 “So if you get your complaint to the right people, with all the evidence, and it is not a management issue ... Well, then there is the question of identifying the guilty party.  Complaints are sometimes not investigated because there is nobody named as a subject ...”

 

 There is a strange reluctance to open an investigation if the identity of the guilty party is not known in advance

 

 “Then if you get past that, there is the question of the sufficiency of the evidence, another UN peculiarity. Generally speaking, in a criminal case the standard of proof is ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ and the standard in a civil case is ‘on a balance of probabilities.’ The UN investigates its own staff for breach of the staff rules, so you would think it will operate on the civil standard of proof. Wrong. Cases have to be proved by ‘clear and convincing evidence. What does that mean?”

 

 “It is a higher standard than ‘on a balance of probabilities’ - but not as high as ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’- but more importantly, there is enough wiggle room that it can be argued.  This can be used as an excuse so as not to proceed with a case against someone, particularly if that ‘someone’ is someone senior or someone politically connected to someone senior ...”

 There is however, a very simple solution that would eliminate many of the opportunities for complaints to be “lost” and that is a central online misconduct reporting system. This would ensure that complaints are all logged, and that there is an audit trail – but there has been immense political resistance to the introduction of such a system.

 

 Having made a complaint, what happens to the complainant?

 

  “In the first place, even if they are the victim, they are told nothing. This understandably, is interpreted as a sign that nobody was really interested. Where the complaint is one of harassment or abuse of authority, if the victim is never told what happened with the case, there is little chance of them ever feeling vindicatedor feeling  there is any kind of closure.”

 

 “When a staff member does make a complaint – if that complaint is against their boss or someone senior, they will be retaliated against. That is not just a ‘risk’ it’s a racing certainty!”

 

 “It may be disguised but it may be patently obvious; the UN Ethics Office will respond with the same response as they gave me; ‘there is no evidence’ - and the UNAT has now confirmed in the Wasserstrom decision that if you don’t like the dismissive  answer you get from the Ethics Office, there is not a damn thing you can do.”

 

 The system actually encourages bad managers to retaliate against their staff, Mr Gallo says.

 

 “Retaliation is a major problem. Any UN staff member knows that if he reports his boss or anyone senior – he is committing career suicide. Why would anyone risk?  Most people with a family to support will put kids’ welfare first.”

 

 Management benefits from this. “Look at the UNDT decision Nartey; the Director of The Ethics Office was given a direct order from a judge in the Tribunal to protect the staff member and she didn’t do it. The Judge referred her to the Secretary-General to consider what action should be taken for disobeying the Tribunal’s orders… That was over a year ago. What has happened? Nobody knows.

 

 ”There was speculation that because she was only a year short of retirement, the plan was to move so slowly that she would reach the end of her term and then the ‘problem’ would go away. You can see from the Code Blue documents, however, that she was deeply involved in the conspiracy to stitch up Anders Kompass. That is not what the Ethics Office should be doing.”

     

 “If the organisation cared about whistleblower protection, they would have announced publicly after the Wasserstrom UNAT decision that the regulations are being changed. What have they said? Not a thing.”

 

 “What all this is shows is that senior management of the UN use the Office of Internal Oversight as their private Gestapo, which is patently unacceptable and flies in face of the General Assembly’s intentions.”