Swede agency in funding bid ‘wasted cash’

Date: 19/07/01

By Laurence Frost

THE EUROPEAN Commission is being urged to reject an €8-million funding request from an intergovernmental agency - by the organisation's own staff.

They say the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) is guilty of cronyism and malpractice - a charge supported by an independent report which condemned the institute for "lack of financial management".

Over the past year, a funding crunch has forced the Stockholm-based agency to abandon democracy projects in Nepal, Paraguay, Romania, Peru, Bosnia, Slovakia and the Middle East.

But this has not stopped Secretary-General Bengt Säve-Söderbergh spending hundreds of thousands of euro on travel and excessive salaries for his associates.

Information obtained by European Voice shows that while programmes were being slashed last year, the former Swedish development minister:

• Paid former director Peter Harris €53,000 a year to be 'available' one day a week after he left the institute to return to South Africa.
• Paid a senior executive's salary of at least €72,000 to John Biehl del Rio, a former government official in Chile - staff question whether he produced any work.
• Paid an executive in Costa Rica, Daniel Zovatto, €35,200 in 'rent' for the office in his flat, on top of his salary.
• Paid himself €168,000 a year, tax-free - more than the Swedish prime minister's salary. The institute admits the claims are true, but insists that changes have been made. It says del Rio has been removed from the payroll and Harris is now paid on a "task-by-task" basis.

But Zovatto is still living rent-free in Costa Rica, according to information director Karin-Lis Svarre. "The arrangement is that we rent an apartment for the office and Daniel Zovatto has his own apartment there as well," she explained.

Svarre said a deputy secretary general had been appointed to take over most of Säve-Söderbergh's management role. "The secretary general has agreed he will now concentrate on external relations," she added.

The institute is due to present a €10 million project proposal to the Commission today (19 July). The 80% EU-funded programme would train election monitors and assess the transition to democracy in a number of countries.

But employees say little has changed at the institute since Canadian management consultants ET Jackson & Associates slammed its "lack of corporate financial management capacity" in a report last November. The report singled out Säve-Söderbergh's "control and almost personal ownership" of the organisation for particular criticism, concluding: "The institution allows personal loyalties to dominate some professional relationships. IDEA thinks it has a good shot at getting the EU money," said a member of the organisation's programme staff, who wished to remain anonymous. "And it should get funding - but not under this management."

Barely a week after promising tighter financial controls at last month's meeting of member government representatives, IDEA flew one of its directors business class to attend a birthday party in Oslo at public expense.

The birthday was that of former Noweigan foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg, one of a clutch of key Säve-Söderbergh's allies from across Scandinavia's social democratic elite. Finland's ex-president Marrti Ahtisaari also sits on his advisory board, chaired by Stoltenberg.

Swedish development minister Gun-Britt Andersson, who worked under Säve-Söderbergh when he held the same office, is another supporter. In the wake of the Jackson report, foreign minister Anna Lindh allowed IDEA to take charge of a conference on democratisation held under the joint auspices of Sweden's EU presidency and the Commission in May.

In the same month, Säve-Söderbergh met External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten - a fellow development minister in the late 1980s - to ask for funding. "Lindh and Patten had a lot to do with one another during the presidency," said a source close to the commissioner. "She probably expressed satisfaction from the Swedish side with the activities of IDEA... I assume that she supports the institute otherwise she wouldn't have handed them the conference."

But the Commission says it will pay more attention to the Jackson report than Sweden appears to have done. "I think it's an important element," said an official. "I don't think we'll put Community funding into an outfit which has raised certain doubts as to the way it's been managed."

• As European Voice went to press, an anonymous letter purporting to be from two swedish staff at IDEA, confirmed the seriousness of problems at the agency. It stated that the management had made a mistake by recruiting "international staff members who are greedy and not committed" but that internal criticisim was being led by a minority "largely motivated by money and personal revenge. We feel they should not be allowed to destroy this organisation, which was founded with high ideals and we are all proud of, despite the problems we need to correct."

The European Commission is being urged to reject ann €8-million funding request from an intergovernmental agency - by the organisation's own staff. They say the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) is guilty of cronyism and malpractice.

http://www.idea.int http://www.idea.int

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