The UN oversight report on the UNDP’s inappropriate handling of funds in North Korea was released last week, while a U.S. Department of State report offers a few details on what a small portion of the funds were used for:

About $3 million in United Nations money intended to help impoverished North Koreans was diverted by the Pyongyang government toward the purchase of property in France, the United Kingdom and Canada, according to a confidential State Department account of witness reports and internal business records. Millions more, the department reported, went to a North Korean institution linked to a bank alleged to handle arms deals.

The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) in North Korea spent about $3 million a year over the past decade to promote the country’s economic growth, foreign trade and investment. It halted operations in March after the United States alleged that the agency engaged in improper hiring and financial practices. A preliminary U.N. audit, released last week, confirmed that it violated its own guidelines by hiring local workers who were selected by the North Korean government and paying them in foreign currency.

[…]

The U.S. probe discovered that the UNDP purchased for the North Korean government 29 books for an arms control and disarmament project, including one titled “The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation.” Morrison said the books were purchased in December and delivered last month. “In hindsight, better judgment could have been used in the selection and delivery of these books,” he said.

The State Department and the UNDP are in sharp dispute over some of the figures in the transactions. Such quarrels have been frequent between State and the UNDP, with tempers subsiding when documentation emerges to challenge the rhetoric.

According to the State Department, the UNDP transferred more than $7 million between 2001 and 2005 to a North Korean government entity, the National Coordination Committee for UNDP. Morrison said the figure is much lower — a few hundred thousand.

At this point the UNDP’s incompetence has been established, so the figures I’d take with a grain of salt are theirs. Other research also points to a much, much larger UNDP problem with cash handling in North Korea:

Ambassador Wallace’s letter states that “as of 1999 there were twenty-nine ongoing UNDP projects in the DPRK with a total budget of $27.86 million.”[4] The Wall Street Journal reports that “while the precise amount of hard currency supplied through UNDP isn’t known, the documents suggest it has run at least to the tens of millions of dollars since 1998 and one source says it could be upwards of $100 million.”[5] (emphasis added)

That’s right, a figure that could approach $100 million U.S. dollars.

Though I’ve found issues with the reporting of this WaPo reporter in the past, as OFK notes, the U.S. mission to the UN has basically confirmed some of the details:

The mission essentially confirmed a report in Saturday’s Washington Post citing US charges that nearly three million dollars in UNDP aid was used by the Pyongyang regime to buy property in France, Britain and Canada.

Millions more went to a “North Korean institution linked to a bank alleged to handle arms deals,” the daily said, citing a secret State Department report based on witness testimonies and internal business records.

The UNDP is also the organization that let $3,500 of known counterfeit U.S. currency - supernotes, in fact - sit in its safe for 12 years.