US:A Shannon-based aviation company has been suspended from UN contracts because of its alleged links to a bribery scandal involving the UN's most senior Russian official, writes Seán O'Driscoll.
In a statement yesterday, the Office of Internal Oversight Services Procurement Task Force said it was continuing investigations after suspending Volga-Dnepr Ireland Ltd from all UN projects.
The company, which specialises in heavy aircraft repairs at its Shannon headquarters, was suspended along with its Russian parent company, Volga-Dnepr, for the group's alleged bribery of Vladimir Kuznetsov, who was the highest-ranking Russian diplomat in the UN when he was arrested in September 2005.
He was convicted of money-laundering two weeks ago and faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in June.
Mr Kuznetsov was head of the UN General Assembly's Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, the committee that oversees the UN budget.
The then Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, waived Mr Kuznetsov's diplomatic immunity so New York prosecutors could charge him with money laundering. At this trial in New York earlier this month, a senior diplomat in the UN procurement department, Alexander Yakovlev, admitted he took money from Volga-Dnepr and allegedly sent some of it to Mr Kutnetsov's secret Caribbean bank account.
Mr Yakovlev, who agreed to give evidence against Mr Kuznetsov in exchange for leniency, admitted money laundering and corruption charges in New York in August 2005.
During Mr Kuznetsov's trial, Mr Yakovlev said most of the contacts were awarded to Volga-Dnepr in 2000 and 2001 and he personally continued to take payments from the company in 2004 for what he termed "consultancy" work. The UN found that he had received $950,000 from various UN contractors.
Last year, the Department of Transport told The Irish Times that it was "dissatisfied" that Volga-Dnepr Ireland had allowed an aircraft carrying Apache attack helicopters to land in Shannon on its way from the US to Israel.
It said the once-off operation was in contravention of a 1973 law prohibiting the movement of foreign military weapons through Ireland. The Department established the aircraft had to make an unscheduled landing in Shannon for repairs in February 2006 before continuing its journey to Israel.