UN food program asks for $775 million while sitting on $1.2 billion

Fox News:

Just weeks before it announced the onset of a global food crisis and the urgent need for donors to provide at least $775 million in additional funding, the World Food Program (WFP) was sitting on a cash and near-cash stockpile of more than $1.22 billion.

The startling figure is contained in the latest audited statements of the WFP, which were endorsed by WFP’s executive director, Josette Sheeran, on March 31, 2008 — just a month before Sheeran announced at an international aid conference on April 22 that a “silent tsunami” in rising food prices demanded the huge infusion of cash for WFP’s latest budget.

In an op-ed article published in the International Herald Tribune on May 1, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon further declared that the WFP had just “$18 million cash in hand” in the wake of its appeal for emergency funding.

The audited statements are due to be presented to the annual Rome meeting of WFP’s supervisory executive board in June.

Click here to see the audited financial statements.

The $1.22 billion figure, tallied as of December 31, 2007, represents an increase of nearly $400 million over the WFP’s cash reserves a year earlier, as laid out in a report to the WFP’s governing executive board in June 2007.

...

It sounds like they were trying to take advantage of recent food riots to solicit funds they did not need. That is not surprising for a corrupt enterprise like the UN.