North Korea Charged With Misusing UN Fund
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
North Korea misused nearly $3 million in United Nations money intended to help the impoverished regime, by purchasing property in France, the United Kingdom and Canada, the Washington Post reported Sunday.
The newspaper said millions more went to a bank linked to a North Korean institution allegedly to handle arms deals, the newspaper said, citing a U.S. State Department report based on witness testimonies and internal business records.
The revelations came at a time when the Bush administration has been working closely with other participating nations of the six-party talks, particularly Russia, to arrange a transfer of $24 million in tainted North Korean money to facilitate the Feb. 13 deal to shut down Pyongyang's main nuclear reactor.
The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in North Korea spent about $3 million a year over the past decade to promote the North's economic growth, foreign trade and investment.
In March, the agency halted operations after Pyongyang failed to meet operational changes endorsed and mandated by the UNDP executive board, such as ending all payments in hard currency and discontinuing sub-contracting of local staff via government recruitment.
A separate State Department probe, led by Deputy U.S. Ambassador to U.N. Mark Wallace, also found that the UNDP procured for North Korea equipment that could be used in a weapons program, the daily said.
Such ``dual use'' equipment included global-positioning systems, computers, computer accessories and a mass spectrometer used to determine the isotopic composition of elements, it said.
UNDP spokesman David Morrison was quoted by the newspaper as saying that the equipment was purchased for weather-forecasting purposes but agreed that the equipment could also be used in a weapons program.
``UNDP takes these allegations very seriously and has asked the U.S. mission to provide all available documentation to substantiate the allegations and to facilitate UNDP's own immediate review of them,'' said Morrison.