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^Jt<VO-Vl£'^ T^Usla Hji&~*/(Jb£'*( UNITED NATIONS NATIONS ^Jt<VO-vl£'^ T^UsL\ M *• a HJi&~*/(jb£'*/ ( UNITED NATIONS NATIONS UNIES POSTAL ADDRESS - ADRESSE POSTALE : UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. 10017 CABLE ADDRESS - ADRESSE TELEGRAPHIQUE : UNATIONS NEWYORK EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL CABINET ou SECRETAIRE GENERAL 29 July 2005 On behalf of the Secretary-General, I would like to thank you for your letter of 21 July 2005. We are pleased to be able to inform you that the remarks attributed to Mr. Christopher Burnham, Under-Secretary-General for Management, regarding the "mafias" within the United Nations were entirely false. I attach a transcript of the interview, and a letter that Mr. Burnham has sent to the Sunday Telegraph requesting a correction. The Secretary-General has asked me to convey his appreciation for your letter, and his assurance that he takes the issues you have raised extremely seriously. Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration. Mark Malloch Brown Chef de Cabinet His Excellency Mr. Aminu Bashir Wali Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations New York Dear Editor, I must take exception to a portion of an article by your UN correspondent Charles Laurence ('Deep -rooted culture of secrecy and arrogance will take 'at least 7 years' to correct, 17 July). Mr. Laurence accurately quoted me as saying "I don't believe you come to the UN to make money but to serve mankind. If the intent is to make money, this is not the place for you." But in the next sentence of his story, he referred to the alleged existence of "dominant national blocs" such as the "Swedish mafia" or the "Nigerian mafia". By his use of quotation marks, Mr. Laurence implied that I used these words. Nothing could be further from the truth. A transcription of the interview clearly shows it was Mr. Laurence, himself, who suggested the existence of a "Swedish mafia" and a "Nigerian mafia" at the United Nations. My unequivoval response to his question during our interview was no, I had not heard of these terms. Clearly, the suggestion that I referred to such "mafias" in our interview is offensive both to me and to the international civil servants of the United Nations. Please correct the record. I enclose a copy of a transcription of that portion of the interview. Christopher Burnham Under-Secretary-General for Management United Nations Rough Transcript - USG Bumham Sunday Telegraph Interview Charles Laurence (see bolded portions below related to the letter to editor above) Q: What do you see as the problem? Here? Like many global organizations, both public and corporate, we are struggling to catch up with the technology and the corporate governance of the twenty-first century. Now I have an American-centric view on those things, formed by the effect of Sarbanes-Oxley. So what I think of a 21st century corporate governance I immediately am going to go to the internal controls, as a vehicle for assessing the Organization. Q: Put that in plain English... I came here for three broad categories - accountability, transparency and ethics, and within accountability you have both the internal control portion that corporate America is no embracing if not grappling with and that includes a culture from the very top of leadership on accountability, responsibility, accuracy. But there are below that a series of circuit breakers that ensure that what we say we are doing, we in fact are doing. And that includes an internal audit, independent external audit and independent audit committee training, training in accounting standards and training in ethics. All those come in under the rubric of accountability. Transparency.... And by the way the final piece of that is do the systems support your effort to determine ROE. Now your readers will know ROE as return on equity which is an impossible calculation in any public or government entity. So let's change the "E" to effort, and try and measure our return on effort. And the backbone of that measurement is having a financial system that aggregates the data, that does so accurately, that does so in a timely basis around the world. It is something that huge corporations are struggling with. It is something that we have spent four years at the US Department of State implementing - a global financial management system - and it is clearly something that we are going to have to modernize here if we are going to be able to link budget and performance together. Let's talk about transparency. Transparency means that, as a public entity, our shareholders around the world - the global taxpayer - is entitled to this information in a timely manner, and thanks to the world wide we, timely now means immediate. It also starts with a corporate-like structure of reporting. Every corporation - or at least public corporation, uses MD&A - management discussion and analysis. And so we have to go from what I have seen is the best annual report that we have within the United Nations, which is the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. But from my American-centric standpoint, it still lacks the auditors' statement, the financials, performance measures, outcomes, self- assessment. In other words, it still doesn't encompass ROE - return on effort. And so part of transparency is presenting the information that is readable, accessible, understandable to global shareholder of the United Nations. Ethics.... It is recognized by all, and being led by Kofi Annan in an effort to establish an independent ethics office, to establish an independent training programme in ethics, to take senior managers annually on a retreat to talk about these issues - issues about how to create a culture of the highest ethical standards so that the United Nations becomes the example for the world of probity. Now of course, we know that we have reached a low with the scandals of the recent years, and I believe that in coming here, and being her for just a month as of today, that there is a broad and deep commitment to this and I am bolstered by that. There is no doubt that when the Whitehouse nominated me for this position, that that was why they asked me to come here. And certainly I believe that is why Kofi Annan and a group of my fellow Under-Secretary-Generals who I interviewed (with), selected me because I have come here with that commitment. Q: How deep does that really go, do you think. Are they... I think there's a common perception that the process is certainly underway -1 think Mark Malloch Brown shares that view and he also -I have seen him on a number of occasions - he is quite clear that it's a rescue operation - that if the Organization is going to survive as a useful institution it has to reform, basically in his words, both institutionally, which I guess is your job, and politically... because it has to stop being a US-bater. And he is up front about that. Do you see yourself as part of that? I've done turnarounds before. I wouldn't use the word rescue I would use the word turnaround , and again - forgive me but I have spent half my life in the corporate - in the financial world— and half my life in the .... most meaningful in my training has been my financial experience and so forgive me as I use the comparisons of ROE and turnaround and MD&A but I think these are very applicable to what we are trying to do. Q: The article I was telling you about earlier (pre-interview), I think Dick Thornburgh was here at the time... um... we were talking about some culture that seems to have been built in over the years, which includes things like -1 am sure you have heard all these terms - the Swedish mafia, regional mafias where they doled out jobs and the promotions... Well I haven't heard that but... No. Q: Well perhaps I am getting out of date... the way the jobs were divided up among different international groups, like we are going to have this section, you are going to have this section, and that that seems to be part of the culture. And the other side seems to have been that it has become almost accepted that you fiddle your expenses basically — the journalistic equivalent is bolstering your expenses or playing the exchange rate. And that's kind of within the bureaucratic culture. Is that something you are interested in... ? I don't know what you mean by playing the exchange rate. Q: Well the article I wrote had one example of a lady with the Refugee Commission (sic) who went early into Phnom-penh in Cambodia and used her overnight allowance to rent an apartment block. This may or may not have been true - it was a sort of apocryphal story that went into the story and kind of went around the United Nations.. So she managed to parlay her New York- based overnight allowance into renting an apartment block, which she then sub-let to the next wave of UN officials that came in and made enough money in six months to buy an apartment on the Upper East Side. This kind of story - (unintelligible) .. .so as I say without going into every dot and comma, is that something that a) you perceive as part of the problem, and secondly that is something it is in your brief to stop. I haven't heard of that before. I am focused on bringing accountability, transparency and ethics as the three categories that I want to focus on, and beneath those certain actions that have to take place.
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