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| U.N. Agency Provided $2.3M Worth of Equipment for Venezuela — Or Did It? |
| 2008-04-02 |
| Why did the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) buy $2,375,000 worth of walk-through airport body scanners for the radical leftist Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez? Or did the agency purchase the high-tech equipment at all? And if not, what happened to the $2.3 million? According to UNDP, not only did the 2007 purchase take place, it was arranged in order to ensure “objectivity, transparency, efficiency” of the procurement in a country that, under Chavez, supports terrorists in neighboring Colombia and has aligned itself with sponsors of international terror such as Iran and Cuba. According to UNDP spokesman David Morrison, the contract was awarded by UNDP on behalf of Venezuela’s national customs and taxation authority, after a free and open competition that guaranteed fairness and openness in the deal. But according to UNDP internal documents examined by FOX News, things didn’t quite happen that way. In the confidential minutes of UNDP’s top headquarters procurement committee, the contract was awarded to a Venezuelan firm named Setronix C.A., without competitive bidding. The same waiver of competition is also cited in internal UNDP procurement records that finalized the transaction. The highly reputable U.S. defense contracting firm that manufactured the 19 ProVision scanners procured by UNDP, L3 Communications, says that the only shipment of scanning machines it sent to Venezuela under UNDP auspices last year was for the country’s correctional system. A company spokesman said the firm had no information to add about any other Venezuela procurement involving UNDP. Since March 20, when FOX News first began asking questions about the deal, UNDP has hastily begun publishing an electronic “paper trail” that apparently aims to justify the purchase that may or may not have taken place the way the UNDP says it did — if it took place at all. The focus of concern is a contract known in UNDP’s financial system as RBLAC/07/066, covering the $2.3 million scanner purchase. UNDP asserts that it did absolutely nothing wrong in the way it handled the deal. In defense of that assertion, a UNDP spokesman in New York referred FOX to a page on the website of UNDP’s Venezuela regional office, which describes a joint UNDP-Venezuela Project #58054, “support for the consolidation of the modernization of the customs system.” |
| Posted by:Fred |