Report: Departing UN auditor blasts Secretary General Ban

Jul 20, 2010, 9:43 GMT

   New York - The departing United Nations chief auditor issued a strong condemnation of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's personal leadership, in a confidential memo obtained by the Washington Post.

   The newspaper reported online early Tuesday that Inga-Britt Ahlenius of Sweden, who was undersecretary general of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services until last week, wrote in her final report that Ban had interfered with her efforts to root out corruption by preventing her from hiring staff and by running his own internal investigations.

   'Your actions are not only deplorable, but seriously reprehensible. ... Your action is without precedent and in my opinion seriously embarrassing for yourself,' Ahlenius said in her 50-page report to Ban. 'I regret to say that the secretariat now is in a process of decay.'

   Vijay Nambiar, Ban's chief of staff, told the Washington Post in a written response that 'many pertinent facts were overlooked or misrepresented' by Ahlenius.

   Ban was elected Secretary General in 2007, following a damaging scandal over widespread corruption in the world body's management of the Iraqi oil-for-food programme under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.