Corruption

David Rohde – April 14, 2013

Reforms are needed for the organization that is asked to solve the world’s problems to have a chance. It is the world’s most important organization, yet remains one of the most dysfunctional.

This week a former United Nations employee described a pervasive culture of impunity inside the organization – one in which whistle-blowers are punished for exposing wrongdoing. James Wasserstrom, a veteran American diplomat, said he was fired from his job and detained by U.N. police – who searched his apartment and placed his picture on wanted posters – after he reported possible corruption among senior U.N. officials in Kosovo.

Steve Rennie – April 15, 2013

A decade after an accountant at the Canadian embassy in Venezuela is said to have misappropriated more than $2 million, the federal government is still trying to get most of its money back.

Figures released last fall show Canada has yet to recoup $1.75 million of the $2.2 million lost to "fraud involving immigration revenue." But a newly released document tells the full story. A report by Foreign Affairs' special investigations unit reveals for the first time how an accountant and his brother-in-law allegedly siphoned the money from the embassy's bank accounts.

Andrew Seymour – March 28, 2013

A former immigration manager was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison after a judge found she had undermined Canadian values, potentially put the country at risk and tarnished the nation’s international reputation by accepting cash and gifts in exchange for providing special treatment to certain immigrants.

Corruption within the ranks of the public service will not be tolerated, Ontario Court Justice Catherine Aitken told a teary-eyed Diane Serré before handing down the sentence. Serré’s white-collar crimes were anything but harmless or victimless, Aitken said, and left a “black mark” on the country’s immigration system.

Catherine Solyom – March 6, 2013

Note to Michel Lalonde: this is NOT what democracy looks like. Citing the “continuity of provincial democracy,” the president of Genius Conseil (formerly Groupe Séguin) told the Charbonneau Commission this week that his associates and family members all made contributions to the three provincial political parties — and the firm paid the associates back with generous Christmas bonuses.

Known as a prête-nom, or frontman scheme, the ruse allowed the firm, eager to keep its place at the provincial trough of public contracts, to contribute, from 1999 to 2009, $117,000 to the Parti Québécois, $94,000 to the Liberal Party of Quebec and $29,000 to the Action démocratique du Québec, which has since folded into the Coalition Avenir Québec.