In Dakar, More Retaliation by UN Development Program, Climate Change Used for Sole Source Contracts
By Matthew Russell Lee
Inner City Press
September 4, 2007
UNITED NATIONS, September 4 -- Retaliation by the UN Development Program, a topic recently raised to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in connection with irregularities in UNDP's North Korea programs, has also occurred in Africa. Mathieu Koumoin refused pressure from his UNDP supervisors to steer on a sole source basis to favor entities in France and Quebec $8 million in funding to address climate change in 40 African countries. According to Mr. Koumoin's counsel Jeanne Marie Col, interviewed by Inner City Press on Tuesday, since his refusal to violate UNDP's own procurement rules, a post-hoc negative evaluation of Mr. Koumoin's work was prepared, he was let go and barred from his office. He is "hiding out in fear" in a small hotel in Dakar, and has just raised his case directly to the UN Ethics Office, which is purportedly in charge of prohibiting retaliation against whistleblowers in the UN System.
Click here for an Inner City Press exclusive copy of the Koumoin letter to UN Ethics Office, which has also been sent to Ban senior advisors Kim Won-soo, Department of Management's Alicia Barcena and Office of Internal Oversight Services' Inga-Britt Ahlenius, among others.
Mathieu-Credo Koumoin is an electrical engineer previously employed by the African Development Bank, with a PhD in development economics, a native of Cote d'Ivoire, who actually believes in what UNDP claims to accomplish: building capacity in developing countries. For that reason, after he helped raise $30 million in technical assistance funding for the West African Project on Climate Change (Index 888036), with the expectation of even more anti-global warming implementation funds through UNDP's Global Environmental Facility, he was surprising and offended when superiors in the GEF, headed by Frank Pinto regarding whose UNDP-funded junket to Goa Inner City Press has previously reported, ordered Mr. Koumoin to "steer" $8 million on a sole source basis to companies in Paris and Canada. "How does that increase capacity in Africa?" asks Ms. Col, his counsel.
Mr. Koumoin has written that "the activities requested by my line Management violated basic rules of UN/UNDP procurement with respect to transparency, competition and accountability, as the African countries for which the funds were intended in the first place were being left in the dark." Mr. Koumoin blew the whistle, to the top of UNDP, and then was let go and is now being further retaliated against.
