The UN's contracts-for-condos scandal

Posted By Aditya Tiwathia Friday, November 3, 2006 - 10:55 AM Share

Corruption Yet another United Nations scandal for you. A top U.N. official, Sanjaya Bahel, was indicted this week by the U.S. government for awarding his pal, Nihant Kholi, contracts with the U.N. worth over $50 million for communications equipment. In return, Bahel got a condo in posh Dag Hammarskjold Towers (named after a former U.N. secretary-general) in midtown Manhattan, only a block away from the U.N. building. Bahel and his family lived there rent free for months before buying it on the cheap from Kholi. The price of the condo was so low that the condo board almost blocked the sale.

The fraud was first uncovered by the U.N.'s Procurement Task Force, originally set up to examine the procurement department after the controversy over the Iraq oil-for-food program. Before coming to the U.N., Bahel worked in the auditing department in the Indian Ministry of Defense, which is notorious for its own procurement scandals. You have to imagine that this is the last thing Kofi Annan wants in the newspapers as he heads into the last few weeks of his term.

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