FAO paid $1.5 million to fake companies.

April 26, 2012

By ALYX BARKER

ROME -- The FAO spent as much as dlrs 1.57 million procuring supplies from fake companies set up by an employee of the UN agency in Sri Lanka, officials say.

A note circulated in the agency from Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Sri Lanka representative, Patrick Evans, dated Oct. 13, 2008, published on Sri Lankan news site The Colombo Telegraph this month, said that there were “problems” with some of the seed supply companies, “both addresses and phone numbers do not appear to be real.”

Evans spotted the issue less than three months after taking the lead in the Sri Lanka office, though according to FAO the problem had been present for two years.

 An FAO spokesman, Peter Lowrey, said the employee responsible was “very effective at deflecting queries about procurement questions, and the personnel who were temporarily in charge of the office failed to perceive the problem.”

The FAO worker was able to manipulate the system to ensure seeds were procured from his companies       FULL STORY>>>