Clarifications regarding media reports about Ismail Ahmed

Various media outlets have recently reported that GAP whistleblower Ismail Ahmed suffered retaliation after alerting authorities to the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) support of a company with links to Islamic militants in Somalia. This is misleading.

Dr. Ahmed was subject to retaliation after providing evidence of corruption involving KPMG and the Somalia country office of UNDP. He tried to alert UNDP to this apparent wrongdoing three times:

• On March 2006, through UNDP’s Fraud Hotline
• In October 2006, to UNDP country office management
• In November 2007, to the UNDP Administrator, with copy to UNDP’s Office of Audit and Investigations (OAI)

The retaliation against Dr. Ahmed began after his October 2006 disclosure and is ongoing.

In April 2008, Dr. Ahmed gave a much more extensive dossier – which contained information about UNDP’s alleged support of a company with suspected links to militant Islamic organizations – to a unit within the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). Dr. Ahmed has not provided UNDP with a complete version of this dossier, which documents the extent of the retaliation he faced and corruption he witnessed, because he made his disclosure externally to OIOS in order to prevent possible destruction of evidence inside UNDP. Dr. Ahmed had reason to believe that an attempt to destroy evidence would be made by specific individuals inside UNDP because this had in fact occurred after his October 2006 disclosure. Although Dr. Ahmed notified OIOS and the UNDP Somalia country office management of his concerns regarding UNDP’s support of a company with suspected links to terrorist organizations, he did not submit his evidence of these links to OAI.

-- Shelley Walden