New York: United Nations is making amends to its rules and policy’s that allow a UN employees to take up jobs with companies they dealt with while in service. The UN has ruled that its employees will have to wait for at least one year before taking up such offers.
The rule comes into effect after Sanjay Bahel, an official of the Indian Defense Auditing Services - on deputation to the United Nations and businessman Nishan Kohli, accused of bribing Bahel, were arrested for allegedly steering $50-million worth of UN contracts to Indian firms in return for valuable real estate in Manhattan.
In an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN correspondent Indira Kannan, Bahel's new lawyer Richard Herman talked about their defence plan.
Q: With Nishan Kohli deciding to plead guilty to some of the charges, how is this going to impact the trial of Sanjay Bahel?
Richard Herman: Nishan Kohli was a co-defendant to Sanjay Bahel and ironically he is now going to be the number one government witness against Sanjay. We will do anything we can to attack his credibility because we don’t believe Sanjay was guilty at all. People plead guilty for various reasons. I think the facts will come out in the course of the trial.
Q: Is Mr Bahel still sticking to his argument about the charges or do you think he may also consider a plea bargain?
Richard Herman: Bahel has pleaded ‘not guilty’. He is innocent and is not involved in any wrongdoings. He is being used by the UN as a scapegoat, to deflect people from examining their instability and corruptness. Its easy for them to point fingers at Sanjay but you must know that the purchase of the condominium in question in this case was done two years after he was out of the procurement division.
There was never any agreement to favour any companies neither did he even received any payments or benefits for that matter. He saved the UN millions of dollars over the years by scrupulously making sure that perspective bidders adhere to the requirements of the UN.
Most importantly every bid that the companies submitted to the UN was a sealed bid. Mr Behl never saw these bids open, and he had no control over that. He has nothing to do with that process.
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