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Strange Behavior of the UNMIN Staff
By KTM Reporter in Kathmandu
On Wednesday, March 05, 2008, in a statement Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) protested the misbehavior of the staffs of the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) to the Nepalese reporters at the site of the crash of the helicopter carrying the team of foreign and Nepalese arms-monitoring experts at Bethan in Ramechhap district; on Tuesday, March 04 the reporters were at the site to collect the facts about the crash; the UNMIN staffs stopped the reporters from collecting information and the TV crew from taking photos and even drove them out of the site according to the local Nepalese press.
The UN Staff Union requested the UN for a full account of the causes of the crash and demanded the review of the helicopter operations of the UN. The Union also wants to understand how the UN receives such aircrafts in a contract from a company, whether such a company provides air safety adequately or not.
The Inner City Press online reports that four days after a helicopter serving the UN Mission in Nepal went down, killing all of those aboard, the UN in New York was unable or unwilling to even state what company the helicopter came from. Inner City Press has adduced that it is from the Russian firm Vertical T. At the Friday's noon briefing at UN headquarters, Inner City Press asked again for confirmation of the name of the contractor, and for a response to the reports of crackdown on journalists. While still refusing any procurement information, the UN spokesperson told Inner City Press by e-mail that "we regret that there was an altercation between members of the UNMIN team and media at the site of the helicopter crash, when members of the UNMIN team were attempting to recover the bodies of colleagues and to cover them before filming."
Vertical T, sometimes spelled Vertikal T, which has amassed some 127 million in UN contracts, involved in this contracting, too. Dmitry Dovgopoly has been the head of the UN's Field Procurement Section. He is also central to the UN's award of no-bid contracts to military contractor Lockheed Martin. During the General Assembly's questioning of the $250 million non-competitive contract to Lockheed for Darfur peacekeeping camps, Inner City Press is told by sources that Procurement official Dmitry Dovgopoly had the Ukraine's ambassador reach out to other countries' Permanent Representatives, urging them to cool off on inquiries into the Lockheed deal, given Dovgolopy's involvement.
Earlier this week, Inner City Press asked Dovgopoly to comment on another procurement irregularity in which he is involved, the changing of the final Request for Proposals for the follow-on Darfur infrastructure contract after a request from the French mission to the UN. Dovgopoly did not respond. And the UN spokesperson's office, even four days after the crash in Nepal, could or would not provide the name of the helicopter owner.
