Mischief-makers at UNOPS are busy and the UN Secretary-General must quickly appoint its new Executive Director

19 March 2023 – Mukesh Kapila

Those following my writings on the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) are familiar with the sordid saga of misconduct, mismanagement, and misappropriation tantamount to corruption and perhaps fraud.

Also evident at this multi-billion-dollar United Nations agency have been a leadership that lied through it thief and practiced rampant profiteering, rapacious rent-seeking behaviour, enjoyed egregious conflicts of interest and revelled in raw abuse of power. Not to mention UNOPS’s broken governance, absent oversight, shredded whistleblower protection, and zero transparency and accountability.

Everything that could go wrong at the top of UNOPS did so through the flagrant misbehaviour of its leaders. They ran the agency as a personal fiefdom in outrageous violation of all UN rules,  regulations, and codes of conduct. This happened under the world’s gaze while the Executive Board slumbered and the administration of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres looked away.

The UNOPS scandal was exposed only when desperate staff decided that enough was enough. They urged me to voice their story because they could not do so themselves, due to the bullying, threats and intimidation the organisation practiced against those who had the courage to stand up.

Backed by the staggering volume of internal evidence and records they shared with me, my writings were rapidly picked up by the New York Times, Devex, and other media. UNOPS flustered and bluffed – and even tried to intimidate me directly and through proxies. But, in their arrogant sense of impunity, they badly misjudged. This story of the worst case of organisational misconduct in the history of the United Nations system since its 1945 foundation, swiftly travelled around the world.

Mr Jens Wandel was parachuted into UNOPS on  9 May 2022 as Acting Executive Director.  Reputed to harbour long-held ambitions to head UNOPS, he is the ultimate insider deeply steeped in the rituals of the UN system. That created initial scepticism on whether his “clean up” mandate would translate into “cover up”.

But external pressure was irresistible and Mr Wandel was forced to act, especially when the Board was finally roused and the UN Secretary-General himself felt the heat. Donors froze funding and key governments such as the US and Finland demanded corrective action.

Key miscreants and failed duty-bearers in the UNOPS Senior Management Team were gradually separated including its Executive Director Grete Faremo, her deputy Vitaly Vanshelboim,  Legal Counsel James Provenzano,  CFO Marianne de la Touche, and Programmes Director Honoré Dainhi.

However, they have not yet been held legally accountable and penalised appropriately. Because the Secretary-General hides them under the misused privilege of UN immunities and even refuses to publish the reports of his own investigations.

UN efforts to recoup the millions of lost dollars are said to be continuing  but hopes are fading as the months pass. Nevertheless, the quest for accountability must never end.

Meanwhile, many of the recommendations made through my writings appear to have been implemented. That does not signify great sagacity on my part. On the contrary, these are the basic no-brainer reforms that are obvious to even the dimmest student of good organisational practices and the UN’s own normatively-excellent rules.

Exceeding my own expectations, the  re-galvanised Board has even demanded restitution signalling that a criminalised enterprise cannot be allowed to gain from its immoral earnings. This means returning to donors and partners an estimated US$150 million of the illegitimate profits that UNOPS had greedily accrued over the past four years. UNOPS will also be forced to revert to its usual operational support role charging a fair fee for its services and following UN values and procedures as per its original constitution.

Undoubtedly, the business management schools that once lionised the previous leadership are making case studies out of the UNOPS  debacle. However, the agency is not out of the woods. It remains fragile until a new Executive Director is in place with two good deputies, and further changes at director level. Current procrastination is paralysing and damaging UNOPS because only the substantive new ED will have credibility to carry out further reforms.

Mr Wandel has done what he could and it is right that he leaves soon.  In May 2023 he completes a year in the Acting ED role and will be comforted by the generous emoluments and benefits that will be unlocked on reaching that anniversary. He should then be given a good send-off party.

But it is alarming to hear the shenanigans underway as the backers of various ED candidates – member states as well as competing UN agencies – lobby in New York and Copenhagen for their favourites The tactics are familiar and centre on denigrating competing candidates rather than debating their relative merits.

The tactics include distracting the SG by proposing nonsense candidates to him. Such as the new name currently doing the rounds: a Portuguese politician who comes from the same political grouping as once did Mr Guterres who is Portuguese himself.  Surely, Mr Guterres is more prudent than opening himself to a charge of cronyism?  Or being accused of bending the rules, as the application process closed some time ago, and may not admit new candidates?

Besides, the last thing that UNOPS needs is another politician after being  ill-served by the previous ED who was a flamboyant Norwegian politician.  Could we please have someone  boringly “ordinary” who is both UN-experienced and competent and above all, has an unblemished proven track record of integrity and performance?

Reportedly, Mr Wandel, a Danish national, is himself busy with machinations to influence the choice of his successor. Perhaps to secure his own future influence and interests?  If true, this is unethical. He demeans his reputation and risks undoing all the good he has latterly done at UNOPS if he does not know when to stop pulling the strings that are not his to pull.

Neither should Denmark abuse its position as host of UNOPS HQ through the lobbying that it is doing in New York. The Danish Government, to its shame, must not forget the rot that infected UNOPS happened on its territory. And despite sanctimonious statements, it has done little, if anything yet, to enforce the rule of law that it could do, if it had the will.

Nominally, there is an open application process for UN appointments. But the Executive Directorship of UNOPS,  like  all senior UN appointments, is ultimately a prerogative of the Secretary-General advised by his principal consigliere, Deputy SG Ms Amina Mohammed.

Of course, the UN appointments system needs reform but this is what we have now: a  process more mysterious than even papal elections which, at least, benefit from divine guidance. I never thought that I would ever say this but, in the UNOPS ED case, Mr Guterres and Ms Mohammed should be left in peace to make their own decision, and may their God guide them.

And so, we wait for “blue smoke” to issue from the 38^th floor of UNHQ in Manhattan. Perhaps  Mr Wandel will recognise that, for all his other talents, he does not have divine grace.  His greatest gift to UNOPS will, therefore, be to stop meddling in his successor’s appointment and depart with dignity.