The Associated Press reported that U.N. investigators say a Guatemalan lawyer who “appeared in a posthumous video accusing the country’s president of his murder,” actually contracted the hit himself.

Attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg made a video before he was killed, saying that if anything happened to him, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom would be involved.

The head of a special U.N. investigations unit, invited by the Guatemalan government to investigate, concluded that Rosenberg took the hit out on himself. He was killed May 10.

I find this story especially suspicious in light of another story AP reported the same day about the UN cutting way back in investigating fraud and corruption within its ranks.

The story notes that cases involving the possible misappropriation of millions of dollars have been shelved over the past year.

In the past decade, the U.N. was found to have been taken for gazillions of dollars when more than 2,200 companies from some 40 countries colluded with Saddam Hussein’s regime to bilk $1.8 billion from the body’s oil-for-food program for Iraqi humanitarian relief.

In response, the story notes, in 2006 it established a special anti-corruption unit that for the next three years uncovered “at least 20 other major schemes affecting more than $1 billion in U.N. contracts and international aid.”

But last year, the U.N. disbanded the agency and diverted its work to a different office. Since then, according to the story, the number of cases dealt with has dropped dramatically and most of its investigators have been let go. 

Sounds about right. Just as it’s becoming abundantly clear that the failed experiment called the United Nations is corrupt to its foundation; abandon all attempts to clean it up.

The head of an anti-corruption watchdog group says she “fears the U.N. is greatly diminishing its self-policing capabilities” — something of an understatement, in my view.

“U.N. officials — who operate a $5 billion annual budget and whose extended agencies and funds spend at least $20 billion a year more — say their commitment to rooting out corruption is undiminished,” according to the story. 

Excuse me while I guffaw.

The story notes that, for instance, “nothing has come of a task force report completed in December 2008 that found $1 million a day flowing out of a safe in a U.N. project office in Kabul — part of $850 million intended for Afghanistan’s rebuilding and elections between 2002 and 2006.” 

Some of the missing money seems to have been diverted without authorization to expand U.N. operations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and investigators could find no documentation confirming “how the Kabul office used tens of millions of dollars meant to promote democratic elections in Afghanistan.”

“No action has been taken on a task force finding that about half of $350,000 in U.N. funds intended to launch a radio station for women in Baghdad was used to pay off personal loans, a mortgage, credit card bills and taxes, as well as for cash withdrawals from a bank in Jordan,” according to the story. 

The corruption is rampant and widespread, according to the story. And it seems to me the enormous amounts of money involved makes it extremely unlikely that the countries and agencies involved will cooperate or come clean.

The story says that at the end of 2008, the U.N. General Assembly refused to fund the task force any more — because of complaints of wrongdoing by some of the suspect but powerful nations. 

In my view this is just more proof, as if more were needed, that the United Nations is a waste of time and prime New York real estate — and an extremely expensive one, to boot.

And the corruption may be operating at spy-novel levels.

A Washington-based nonprofit law firm that defends whistleblowers, says “the U.N. quashed the task force, buried its cases and retaliated against an investigator trying to protect some probes’ computer files,” the story says.

Foot-dragging on left-over cases appears to be allowing time for suspects within the U.N. to destroy evidence, the story says.

New inquires have been barred into anyone outside the U.N., including former U.N. staff, according to the story.

“The move undercuts oversight of billions of dollars in U.N. spending and more than 6,600 U.N. contractors who receive that money, say U.N. officials, diplomats and legal experts. Additionally, they say, U.N. staff members could avoid scrutiny — and potentially get away with fraud, embezzlement or theft — by simply quitting,” the story notes.

The scandal may go all the way to the Secretary General’s office, according to the AP.

“Ban Ki-moon says he has seen ‘steady progress’ in U.N. self-policing since the Office of Internal Oversight Services’ creation, and he pledged ‘full support’ for the agency,” according to the story, but “the investigation division has not had a permanent director for more than 2 1/2 years in a hiring process bogged down by Ban’s office, which twice opposed the selection of an American for the job, say U.N. officials and diplomats,” AP reports.

An independent panel unanimously “deemed” the American candidate the most qualified, but “the appointment is improperly ‘bottlenecked’ in Ban’s office,” according to the story.

Considering the lackadaisical way the U.N. approaches corruption and fraud, how seriously should we take the conclusions of the U.N. investigator into the slaying of the probably-Jewish Guatemalan lawyer, do you think?

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