Global Air Carrier Suspended in U.N. Procurement Investigation
By By Claudia Rosett and George Russell
Fox News
May 3, 2007
The grinding investigation of scandal in the United Nations’ multi-billion-dollar procurement department — an inquiry that has gone on for more than a year — is more secretive than a conclave of cardinals in search of a new pope, and with no definitive result in sight.
But every now and then, odd signs float up — and the latest signal is not promising. A battle has erupted between U.N. investigators and a global air carrier, SkyLink Aviation, Inc., which does some of the world body’s most important heavy lifting. In the skirmishing, the U.N. has suspended the firm from its list of approved contractors.
This sanction was never announced, but has been discovered by FOX News through a comparison of U.N. suppliers lists dating back to mid-March, when SkyLink quietly vanished from the roster. By various accounts, the suspension is a pressure tactic aimed at ending the apparent stonewalling of a probe into a wide array of graft allegations in the U.N. procurement department. So far, it does not appear to have worked.
SkyLink is a privately-owned, Canadian-based firm which has been involved over many years in some of the U.N.’s most sensitive operations, in places such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It has also weathered at least two procurement suspensions in the past. In both previous cases, the firm was cleared and restored to normal vendor status.
