U.N. Official Fired in Investment Scandal

"The United Nations fired a senior official on Thursday after an internal investigation into a financial scandal that embarrassed the world organization and led to an overhaul of the agency that the official oversaw.

The official, Vitaly Vanshelboim, was the second U.N. figure to lose his job because of the scandal. He did not respond to emails posing questions about the case.

In May, a day after The New York Times published an article describing how the little-known agency had entrusted $61 million in loans and grant money to a single British family, the head of the agency stepped down at the request of the U.N. secretary general. The agency, the Office for Project Services, is at risk of having to write off about $22 million of the loans as bad debt.

In 2015, agency officials decided to try something unheard-of for the United Nations, teaming up with the private sector to operate like a for-profit investment bank. In an opaque and murky transaction, it handed over all of the funds it had raised to a businessman and his 22-year-old daughter whom the officials had met at a Manhattan party.

The financial disaster damaged the credibility of the United Nations and weakened the trust of donor countries. Finland suspended its funding to UNOPS, as the agency is known, and is reviewing its donations to other U.N. agencies in the aftermath of the revelations. The United States also paused its funding to the agency..."