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The UN Development Program gave US$150 million to North Korea without checking where the money has gone, an unnamed UN official told the Chicago Tribune on Sunday. ¡°At the end, we were being used completely as an ATM machine for the regime,¡± the paper quoted the official as saying. ¡°We were completely a cash cow, the only cash cow in town. The money was going to the regime whenever they wanted it.¡± Nor did the North provide receipts, he said. According to another UN official, a North Korean official wearing a standard-issue dark windbreaker and slacks would come to the UNDP office in Pyongyang every morning and take a manila envelope stuffed with checks, which were issued by the UN as national development aid for the poverty-stricken country. The man never provided receipts when taking the money.
The UN requires its agencies to make disbursements in local currencies when they carry out overseas aid programs, but the Pyongyang office of the UNDP failed to abide by the regulations. In some cases, North Korea clearly misappropriated aid from the UNDP. In one UNDP program to install 300 computers at Kim Il-sung University, North Korea¡¯s most prestigious school, but 40 days after paying for them, UN staffers confirmed that only two computers had arrived there. The UN workers were told the others were packed away in boxes which they were not allowed to open.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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