Tripping over its own feet: UN Pension Board flouts Fund Regulations in requesting the Secretary-General to appoint an Acting CEO

Whatever the results of the upcoming General Assembly resolution on the findings of the comprehensive governance audit of the UN Pension Fund by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (A/73/341), it doesn’t bode well for the Fund that those who are charged with its oversight seem congenitally unable to act with fairness, honesty and integrity.

Once more, the Board Chair is in the process of circumventing Fund Regulations as he requests the Secretary-General to appoint an Acting CEO.

The candidate is Janice Dunn Lee (a U.S. national) who served as IAEA Deputy Director General from 2012 to 2017. Dunn Lee has 40 years’ of experience in the nuclear policy and regulatory fields.

According to the recommendation memo from the Board’s Succession Planning Committee, which conducted the search (more on that below), “while Ms. Dunn Lee has rather limited technical and financial knowledge of pension funds, she demonstrated managerial mastery to oversee the UNJSPF during this transitional period”.  She would need, however, to be supported by “strengthening of the senior technical management” which “would require the timely identification of an experienced high level financial management specialist.” 

While Ms. Dunn Lee may be an accomplished professional, particularly in the field of negotiating nuclear agreements, it’s unclear why the Committee finds her candidacy to be so compelling given its admission about her paucity of experience in key areas of Fund management, skills that are so lacking that she would need to have another high-level staff member to support her, which could take months to recruit and for which the Board has not budgeted.

Still, whatever questions her specific qualifications and lack of knowledge may raise, what’s primarily at stake is the Board’s seeming dogged determination to undermine established Fund procedures and brazenly flout its Regulations.   

The Board, which OIOS found in its audit to be abjectly lacking in anything resembling succession planning, and with the CEO due to separate on 7 January 2019, and the deputy CEO /Acting CEO retiring on 31 January 2018, decided at its July 2018 meeting in Rome, to establish a Succession Planning Committee to identify suitable replacements, and an Acting CEO.

In doing so, the Board decided that the recommendation of the Committee would go to the Secretary-General, through the “Bureau” which does not exist as a legal entity.

Soon after, a number of Board members, including from the WMO, questioned this approach and noted that the decision needed to be reviewed as it flouted the fund’s own rules. They suggested that the Board review its prior decision and requested a Board meeting to review any recommendation by the Succession Planning Committee.

However, the Board Chair kept quiet and sent the recommendation for Dunn Lee’s appointment to the Secretary-General on 13 December 2018. The day after the recommendation was sent, the UN Participant Representatives to the Board wrote to the SG, bringing the illegality of the process to his attention, by noting that “Bureau” as an entity is “not explained in the Fund Regulations and Rules and whose existence has also been questioned by OIOS on legal grounds”. They asked that the Secretary-General  not assume that the Board supported the nominated candidate given that there had been no transparency in the selection process.

To his credit, and in a valiant attempt to regularize and inject transparency into the  process, his Chef de Cabinet wrote to the Board Chair on 19 December 2018 requesting that he “ascertain whether the Board wishes to maintain its decision to submit the recommendation “through the Board’s Bureau, and endorses the candidate, Ms. Dunn Lee”.

No such transparency was forthcoming.  Under the Fund’s Regulations, the Standing Committee makes decisions when the Board is not in session. But yesterday, the Board Chair (who’s publicly referred to fellow Board members as “nutcases”, http://unpension.blogspot.com/2018/08/un-pension-board-chair-lacking.html) started to push through an email vote and will no doubt obtain a majority, thus ensuring that the UN Participant Representatives are bypassed in any attempt to assert respect for the Fund’s Regulations or get clarity on the doubts raised by the Succession Planning Committee on Ms. Dunn Lee’s candidacy.

The Board has roundly rejected critical recommendations of the OIOS governance audit aimed at addressing structural and conflict of interest issues, choosing instead to try to discredit OIOS by reporting it for a flawed and unprofessional audit process.

https://www.passblue.com/2018/08/27/the-un-pension-fund-board-rejects-an-audit-of-its-work/

Each time the Chair and Board members try to pull a fast one as they’re doing here, they trip over their own feet. They tripped over Arvizu’s reappointment and he’ll be gone on 7 January 2019. 

They tripped over the selection of a Deputy CEO some months ago, recommending a candidate who reportedly did not meet the qualifications, only to see him withdraw his candidacy.

They tripped over the extension of the outgoing Acting CEO, Paul Dooley, requesting the SG to appoint a candidate who was the subject in 2006 of OIOS ID case No. 0543/05, concerning actions related to the awarding of nine contracts, without competitive bidding, for a total value of $1,893,450.38, to his supervisor in a job he held prior to joining the UN.

And they’ll trip over this latest issue as well, and keep tripping, until they embrace the OIOS governance audit’s recommendations for improving governance of our Fund, most notably its exhortation to “set[ting] the appropriate tone with regard to integrity and ethical values” – if they’re willing and able, which currently appears to be in serious doubt.