The UNDP worker who brought attention to the illegal hemorrhaging of UN cash in North Korea was retaliated against, according to a UN ethics official:

The top U.N. ethics official has found preliminary evidence that the U.N. Development Program retaliated against an employee who exposed abuse and rules violations in the agency’s programs in North Korea.

But the UNDP has refused a request from the ethics chief, Robert Benson, to submit to a formal investigation, saying it would appoint its own independent investigator.

[…]

Shkurtaj, who previously served in North Korea, said that he had worked for the United Nations since 1994 and that he was forced out after raising concerns about UNDP violations of its rules prohibiting the payment of local workers in foreign currency and the existence of $3,500 in counterfeit U.S. currency in a UNDP safe. The UNDP says that Shkurtaj is a U.N. consultant, not a staff employee, and that the agency declined to renew his contract after it expired in March.

“I noticed significant problems with how UNDP worked in that country,”
Shkurtaj said Monday. “I alerted my chain of command of violations of U.N. rules, but they did nothing. I used the provisions of the U.N. whistle-blower protection policy and went to the outside to report these problems. UNDP retaliated against me for being a whistle-blower.”

Shkurtaj said he took his concerns to U.S. officials and the news media after the UNDP did not act. But UNDP officials have questioned his credibility in discussions with U.S. government officials and with the media. They have denied that he alerted his bosses to the presence of counterfeit cash.

Because Shkurtaj was a contract rather than a direct UN employee, he does not enjoy whistle-blower protection under current UN guidelines.

Retaliation, uncooperative behavior in the UN investigation, and of course the root of the issue of throwing around million of dollars in Pyongyang carelessly, only reinforce the image of the UNDP management as a group of incompetent thugs.