UN Postal Archives Sold for a Pittance

UN Investigators are characteristically taking forever and a day to investigate the clandestine sale of its irreplaceable Postal Archive. For anyone who has worked with or for this organization, the "corporate culture" of the UN can baffle and confuse even veterans in the various areas the UN affects or oversees.

Could it be just a coincidence that the only person publicly identified with the clandestine sale of the Postal Archives also happens to be under suspension for possible involvement in the Oil-For-Food scandal? Hmmm.... What would Sherlock say?

To date, the only U.N. official publicly identified with the sale is the man who signed the letter that was included the auction catalogue. He is Andrew Toh, currently Assistant Secretary General of the Office of Central Support Services (OCSS), which includes the UNPA. According to the letter in the Geneva sales catalogue, Toh was then serving as Director of the U.N.’s Facilities and Commercial Services Division.

Toh, who has held his current job since February 2003, is one of eight U.N. officials who was placed on "administrative leave with pay" — effectively suspended — in the wake of revelations about the ongoing procurement scandal. The U.N. emphasized at the time that the suspension was not intended to imply any wrong-doing on Toh’s part. Toh himself told FOX News that he and the others have been unjustly placed "in limbo."

When questioned by FOX News about his postal archive letter, Toh declared that he couldn’t recall the circumstances of the sale, and said that the process leading up to the auction "all started years before."

Yes, all lost in the UN fog of bureaucratic non-accountable chicanery. The article comments on the general, pervasive, all-encompassing incompetence of the UN:

The postal archive sale may be yet another instance of what Paul Volcker’s investigation into the Oil-for-Food scandal described as "systemic problems in United Nations' administration," involving lack of accountability, oversight, or even basic clarity in the organization’s activities. Despite the historic importance of the postal archive, senior U.N. officials contacted by FOX News professed to know nothing about it — including some in departments specifically charged with approving or blocking the dispersion of U.N. historical material.

And it seems a pandemic of forgetfulness in general when the institutional memory of the UN is challenged to dig out the records and find how the invaluable collection ended up being sold outside the specific rules and regs the UN itself has put in place to ensure the probity of its operations:

Official consent forms required under Secretariat rules for the disposal of archival material have not been found in archival records, according to sources familiar with those records. Nor can U.N. sources familiar with the archive section recall any discussion or find any record of approval for the postal archive sale. As one of these archival veterans told FOX News, "I don’t recall anything about it."

Seems scandal-challenged UN SecGen Kofi Annan has to endure another instance of malfeasance under his spectacularly incompetent and dishonest tenure as perhaps the worst Secretary General yet in a hotly-contested field with such notable disasters as Boutros Boutros Ghali and Kurt Waldheim to contend with. Wonder who he'll blame this one on? Bush, of course.