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POLITICS: U.N. Officials Wary About Publicising Assets

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 14 2007 (IPS) - When Ban Ki-moon took the oath of office as secretary-general of the United Nations last January, he pledged to set the “highest ethical standards” in the organisation.

As promised, he not only declared his financial assets but also went one step further: he made a public disclosure of his wealth, his properties and his bank balance.

“I assure you that I will lead you by example,” Ban told staff members. But his example of public declaration has been duplicated only by his deputy, Asha-Rose Migiro.

Marie Okabe, deputy spokesperson for the secretary-general, said public declarations are voluntary.

But submitting financial disclosure forms to the U.N. Ethics Office is mandatory for all U.N. staff above the rank of director (D-1), including assistant secretaries-general and under secretaries-general, Okabe told IPS.

The mandatory declaration also applies to about 2,000 U.N. staff members dealing with U.N. procurement and investments, along with the staff in the Ethics Office established in Jan 2005.

She said that the deadline for filing was May 31. And PriceWaterhouseCooper, a U.S. auditing firm, is currently reviewing all the declaration forms.

“Once the review is complete, the report of the review will be submitted to the Ethics Office,” Okabe added.

In his financial disclosure statement early this year, Ban said he and his wife Yoo Soon Taek own an apartment and two other lots of land in the Republic of Korea.

They also have three bank accounts, each containing more than 10,000 dollars. The couple has no stock options. But last year, they made a profit of less than 10,000 dollars from the sale of personal property.

Last week, the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), one of the largest single U.N. agencies, announced its own “Strategic Plan” which included management accountability priorities.

UNDP Associate Administrator Ad Melkert told reporters his agency was in the process of finalising a legal framework for addressing non-compliance with ethical and professional standards.

“Basically, the document serves to remind staff members of their duties to abide by the highest standards of conduct and to inform the mechanisms available to report wrongdoing,” he said.

Melkert also said that a number of categories of staff, including senior-level personnel and those involved in procurement activities, would be required to file financial disclosure statements.

“I am happy to inform you that both the UNDP Administrator (Kemal Dervis) and I have completed our financial disclosure statements this year as part of the overall U.N. procedure,” Melkert said.

Asked whether UNDP would follow the example of Ban Ki-moon and make financial disclosure forms public, he said: “I am not in favour of having financial disclosure made public on the website. I think that is overstepping the privacy of people.”

Gillian Dell, global programmes manager at the Berlin-based watchdog group Transparency International, said: “Just as asset declarations are appropriate for a country’s public officials, they are also appropriate for international organisations.”

“In fact, the U.N.’s own Convention against Corruption signed by 140 countries calls on signatories to require the declaration of all sources of income or benefit that may somehow lead to a conflict of interest,” Dell told IPS.

She also pointed out that UNDP, which is actively promoting the U.N. Convention against Corruption, should itself implement the highest standards set out in this global legal framework to combat corruption.

At a meeting of senior U.N. officials last month, it was pointed out that there are legal implications on public declarations, particularly in Islamic countries where the Sharia law is in force.

Whether there should be a public declaration or not depends on legal and cultural norms in each home country, where staffers would return on retirement, one official said.

Another senior official said that even though under Islamic law, all property and assets go to a male heir, her daughters were now entitled to her assets because she had no sons.

If her assets are made public, she pointed out, some long-forgotten or distant male relative could come forward to legally claim her assets over the claims of her daughters. Privacy was therefore important, she added.

Hans von Sponeck, a former U.N. humanitarian aid coordinator for Iraq, said that financial disclosure of assets of senior officials in UNDP or elsewhere in the U.N. system should become standard procedure.

“This information, however, should be treated as confidential. It would not serve any useful purpose to share this with the public unless a staff member has violated the rules of the United Nations,” he told IPS.

Bill Pace, executive director of the Institute for Global Policy, said: “Generally, our organisation does not believe that senior U.N. officials are categorically corrupt as the media and some governments make them out to be.”

However, transparency created by this disclosure of information would be a very good precedence to set.

“It is very important to respect the privacy of the individual at the same time,” Pace told IPS.