James Wasserstrom
James Wasserstrom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Wasserstrom is a US diplomat who currently serves as an anti-corruption officer at the US embassy in Kabul.[1]
UN "whistleblower"
He was posted to Kosovo to fight corruption but in 2007 he witnessed misconduct involving UN officials and a local utility company. He later reportedly uncovered evidence that two senior UN officials had received bribes for awarding a contract for the building of a coal fired power plant and mine.[2] After complaining to the UN's oversight office his job was effectively abolished and he was investigated for misconduct. Wasserstrom then went to the UN's Ethics Office where it was eventually ruled that he was maltreated but that this did not count as retaliation against a whistleblower.[3]
After a lengthy legal battle, documents backing his version of events were uncovered and the UN's Dispute Tribunal overturned the original decision. Whilst a judgement was not made on the alleged corruption in the UN's Kosovo mission, it was decided that the UN's original evidence was conflicted and that the mechanisms for dealing with whistleblowers within the UN were fundamentally flawed.[2] United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon had refused to hand over confidential documents relating to the case to the UN personnel tribunal, despite repeated orders by the tribunal to do so.[4]
Wasserstrom has been critical of the pace of reform in the UN and also of Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon for allegedly undermining support for whistleblowers by trying to limit the jurisdiction of the UN dispute tribunal.[2][5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wasserstrom
Review Panel Judges See a Culture of U.N. Secrecy
UNITED NATIONS — Independent judges appointed to revamp the way the United Nations reviews decisions on matters like hiring, firing, promotions and raises are accusing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of shielding an unhealthy culture of secrecy and trying to undermine the new system.
<snip>
Diplomats, lawyers and others tracking the cases describe the United Nations’ stance on the tribunal as contradictory, if not hypocritical, given the organization’s role in promoting the rule of law globally. “The organization has to decide from the S.G. on down whether this is an organization that respects the rule of law or not,” said George Irving, a former president of the staff union and a lawyer who has worked on administrative cases at the United Nations for more than 30 years. “What you are witnessing essentially is a power struggle. It is all about control, who is going to control the system.”
In several instances, the United Nations has ignored a judge’s orders to produce documents or have officials testify about how decisions were reached. In one case, the judge ordered the organization to pay $20,000 in compensation for the mistreatment of a translator who questioned why he was not promoted.
“Sometimes there may be some cases of decisions which are not totally in line with what the Secretariat has been doing,” Mr. Ban said at a news conference last month. “But we will try to respect all the decisions.”
<snip>
The old system was completely internal. There were no hearings, and the secretary general essentially served as his own judge and jury. It was deemed too slow and too haphazard to cover the needs of about 60,000 United Nations employees globally.
The new system, which the internal literature describes as “independent, professionalized, expedient, transparent and decentralized,” is run by independent judges whose decisions are binding. United Nations employees cannot sue the organization in national courts, so the tribunal is their sole route to address grievances. New York, Geneva and Nairobi, Kenya, each have a judge, with some extras appointed to deal with the case backlog. A three-judge appeal panel will begin hearing appeals in New York on Monday.
Without the power to declare someone in contempt of court, the tribunal judges rely on the Secretariat to engage with them in good faith. But some judges believe accountability goes only so high. Part of the problem stems from the rigid hierarchy of the United Nations, lawyers and other experts say. The judges were assigned an administrative rank that puts them below an assistant secretary general, so those who rank higher often feel that answering the tribunal is beneath them, they said.
Noting that an employee was fired despite a pending tribunal hearing, a May order from the Nairobi tribunal said that the decision “is significant for the contempt it shows of these proceedings.” It said that the United Nations’ response “does not bode well” for a system supposedly based on international law and due process.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/world/17nations.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
I'm not sure the latest status but that eventually turned into this
Aggrieved U.N. Whistle-Blower Seeks Withholding of American Funds
A United Nations whistle-blower who prevailed in a landmark case that exposed evidence of retribution against internal criticism, but who was awarded only a tiny fraction of his claimed financial losses, sought help from Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, asking him to withhold 15 percent of the American government’s United Nations budget allocation.
The whistle-blower, James Wasserstrom, an American whose protracted legal battle with the United Nations ended a nearly 30-year career there, cited an American law that requires such withholding if the secretary of state determines that the United Nations is failing to protect whistle-blowers from retaliation.
The case has become a potential source of acute embarrassment to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon because it has cast an unflattering light on internal protections, put in place more than six years ago, that were theoretically devised to shield whistle-blowers, but in practice appear to discourage them.
Even though he won his case, Mr. Wasserstrom said a United Nations oversight panel judge’s decision last month to award him only $65,000 of his claimed $3.2 million in total damages had sent a message that “clearly tells U.N. staff that even when a whistle-blower wins, he loses.”
The coercive pressure of the withholding threat, Mr. Wasserstrom said in a letter to Mr. Kerry, could force changes in what Mr. Wasserstrom described as an organizational culture in which “U.N. personnel who are aware of misconduct, corruption and fraud are likely to remain silent.”
The United States is the largest single contributor to the regular budget of the United Nations among its 193 members, accounting for 22 percent of the total. The 2012-13 regular budget is about $5.4 billion.
Mr. Wasserstrom, who is now an anticorruption adviser at the United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, released the text of the letter at a New York news conference arranged with the help of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that advocates for whistle-blowers. Copies of the letter also were sent to American officials, including Ambassador Susan E. Rice and more than two dozen members of Congress who sit on committees that have a say about budget allocations to the United Nations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/world/aggrieved-un-whistle-blower-seeks-withholding-of-us-funds.html
I'm not really sure the US is helping in all this considering bribery & corruption is rampant in countries the US does business or overthrow in favor or allies with -- Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria(Halliburton violated the corrupt business act the 20th time in Nigeria), Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, & Ukraine. Don't know the current status of Kosovo except corruption & organized crime is rampant. Not to mention the US has its own issues on this front especially in Columbia
= new reply since forum marked as read
