Amid the many scandals at the United Nations, a new mystery now looms. What happened to the world organization’s unique and valuable postal archive — in effect, the U.N.’s own stamp collection, one of the crown jewels of its past and a popular point of contact with the global public? Auditors from the U.N.’s investigative arm, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), are currently putting the last touches on an investigative report that has taken months to complete, and that aims to determine exactly what happened — and why — to the U.N.’s rare and much-admired collection of materials that belong to the United Nations Postal Administration.
The audit report has not yet been “finalized,” meaning it is soon to be submitted to senior U.N. managers for comment before being handed on to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and the U.N. General Assembly.
One thing that investigators know for certain about the archive: In a discreet but historic auction carried out in a quiet suburb of Geneva, Switzerland, all of it — more than a metric ton of prized material, dating from as early as 1951 — was sold off to a single bidder on May 12, 2003. The collection included original artwork for U.N. stamps, unique so-called die proofs to test the faithfulness of design reproduction, printing proofs and other rarities, along with hundreds of thousands of other stamps, reflecting many of the most colorful aspects of U.N. history. The auction itself was carried out in entirely legal fashion. The price it fetched — $3,068,000 — was hailed on a variety of stamp collecting Web sites as a world record price for a single lot sale at a stamp auction.
But for the U.N., it was no coup, even though, according to officials familiar with UNPA finances, the UNPA netted “some $2.5 million” from the Swiss auction deal. The reason: according to U.N. sources, the archive sale may well have taken place without the permissions required by the regulations of the U.N. Secretariat for the disposal of such important U.N. property.
Within months of the Geneva auction, the U.N. postal archive was resold, then resold again, in proper legal fashion — but in all likelihood for sums that underscore the historic loss to the United Nations. While the prices for the subsequent transactions were not disclosed, stamp collecting experts were quoted on the Web site of a philatelic publication, Stamp Magazine, as saying that the archive had “fabulous profit potential — perhaps three or four times what was paid for it, if it is broken up.” And broken up the archive now undoubtedly is — though how far the collection was dispersed is also unknown.
The postal archive sale may be yet another instance of what Paul Volcker’s investigation into the Oil-for-Food scandal described as “systemic problems in United Nations' administration,” involving lack of accountability, oversight, or even basic clarity in the organization’s activities. Despite the historic importance of the postal archive, senior U.N. officials contacted by FOX News professed to know nothing about it — including some in departments specifically charged with approving or blocking the dispersion of U.N. historical material.
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