UN Pension Board meeting marred by physical threats and intimidation, July 30, 2019

The UN Pension Board’s communiqué of its 66^th session in Nairobi that ended on 26 July 2019 (link below) contains a status report by the Representative of the Secretary-General for Investments, and very little else of substance. 

Nor is there mention of unprecedented levels of physical threats and intimidation, as well as shouting, jeering, and banging on tables, aimed at duly elected UN participant representatives. But it has much to say about establishing a Code of Conduct and related enforcement that's apparently urgently required for self-regulation. 

This communiqué follows the tactic of previous Board messages in its false implication that investment performance exists in a vacuum with no reference to, let alone dependence on, effective governance.

“The long-term financial stability of the Fund was reconfirmed,” crows Acting CEO Janice Dunn Lee – none of whose responsibilities include investments -- before she leaps to reinforce the fiction that “there is no backlog of entitlement cases”.

UN Pension Board: Some throwing eggs; others breaking them. Hoping for constructive results, July 25, 2019

The UN Pension Board's 66^th session in Nairobi, 22 to 26 July, is almost over.

While we'll find out soon enough what its members have done with the sweeping GA reforms contained in resolution A/RES/73,/274, there have been some disquieting signs for some time.

An example was the Board's obvious flouting of the GA’s directive regarding the composition of its Governance Working Group that has been considering several of the proposed reforms for presentation to the Board.

The dysfunction in the Fund Secretariat, currently under Acting CEO Janice Dunn Lee, will be on full display with what's reportedly deliberate and massive misrepresentation of the backlog in pension payments, and a proposed decapitation of the Geneva office for reasons reportedly not based in fact.

The Board will hear from the Representative of the Secretary-General for Investments who’s reportedly shaking up the Office of Investment Management (OIM) and in the process encountering opposition from some staff who apparently don’t share parts of his vision for the OIM.

Major items on the Board’s agenda

As a main item on the Board’s plate is the GA directive in paragraph 14 of its resolution A/RES/73/274, which states that the “Pension Board established a working group, which should adhere to the tripartite structure of the Board, to consider…” issues including “(b) The composition and size of the Board, including the role of retiree representatives and the modalities for directly electing retiree representatives to the Board.”

Update: UN Pension Fund: Toxicity and resistance to change in management culture, July 8, 2019

This article was first published on 6 July 2019 and updated on 8 July 2019.

Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Fund Secretariat, Janice Dunn Lee, moves to decapitate the Geneva office by transferring two of three senior posts to New York, continues the practice of misrepresenting the extent of the backlog in pension payments, goes along to get along with the Pension Board in its pushback against General Assembly reforms,  and refuses to meet with Fund staff representatives at the departmental level.

While this article mainly focuses on dysfunction in the Fund Secretariat, there is disconcerting information about the Office of Investment Management (OIM) under the leadership of Representative of the Secretary-General, Sudhir Rajkumar, who took up his duties in January 2018. 

Update: Since first publishing this article on 6 July, additional, and contradictory, information of the situation in the OIM has come to light. This precludes an objective account of reports that include insufficient transparency in investment reporting and the sidelining of some senior investment officers, among other concerns. There will be more on this as the situation clarifies.

The “Rules-are-like-guidelines” Acting CEO

As reported on 11 January 2019 (link 1), Dunn Lee, who had taken up her post only days before,   announced in her first meeting with  Fund staff representatives that “rules are like guidelines”. Since then, she’s reportedly repeated several variations on the theme, signaling, in the minds of many, that things were not about to get better,  and possibly worse. 

Taking cues from former CEO Sergio Arvizu's playbook, and employing former Acting CEO Paul Dooley as her adviser, Dunn Lee continues to decline to meet with staff representatives at the departmental level on matters concerning Fund staff.

Pushing back against reforms

In her role as Acting Secretary of the Pension Board, Dunn Lee appears to be collaborating with the  Board leadership’s foot-dragging on corrective actions and reforms made by the General Assembly in resolution A/RES/73/274 (link 2) in response to the comprehensive governance audit by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), A/73/341 (link 3). This follows the Board’s rejection of the OIOS governance audit’s findings and recommendations at its July 2018 annual meeting, and its attempt to discredit OIOS auditors (links 4 and 5).