Asylum for sale: Refugees say some U.N. workers demand bribes for resettlement
A seven-month investigation found reports of U.N. staff members exploiting refugees desperate for a safe home in a new country.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/asylum-sale-refugees-say-some-u-n-workers-demand-bribes-n988351
April 6, 2019, 7:00 AM EDT
By Sally Hayden
This is the first story in a three-part series about alleged corruption in refugee resettlement.
DADAAB, Kenya — Hamdi Abdullahi stands outside the United Nations compound in this dusty, sprawling camp — home to more than 200,000 Somali refugees — and throws stones at its barbed wire fence and heavy gates.
Though the U.N.'s refugee agency, UNHCR, is known everywhere as the chief protector and spokesmanfor most of the globe's 25 million refugees, Abdullahi shouts as she hurls the stones, accusing the agency of stealing her children.
She has been protesting outside the compound off and on for years.
The Somali refugee's four children are now 8,000 miles away in Minnesota, with her former husband and his new wife. She last saw them in 2014. They were among the less than 1 percent of refugees in the entire world chosen to be resettled in a new country and given a chance to start their lives again.
Abdullahi said that while her family's need to resettle was genuine, she was left behind because of false information fed to the U.S. government by a UNHCR resettlement officer, David Momanyi, to whom her ex-husband paid a hefty bribe. "I always remember his face," Abdullahi said.
Their status as vulnerable refugees who'd fled a war zone helped her children, her ex and his new wife get into the United States. But Abdullahi says the bribe left her in the Dadaab refugee camp, where she now throws rocks and curses, only to be chased away by the security guards.
"I'm like the walking dead," she said.
Her account is corroborated by a former U.N. contractor, speaking anonymously for fear of retribution, who said he personally collected tens of thousands of dollars from refugees while acting as a middleman for Momanyi — and other UNHCR staffers — over several years. He said Abdullahi's ex-husband paid almost $20,000 in multiple installments.
In separate interviews, more than a dozen other refugees said Momanyi was known for taking bribes. One described the Kenyan as "the architect of corruption and refugee resettlement problems."
In an interview at Dadaab, the UNHCR's staff denied corruption could have played any role in the outcome of Abdullahi's case. They also looked up her case number and said her files show her husband remains in Kenya and was never resettled. Two UNHCR Dadaab staff members also denied that Momanyi had ever worked there.
Click here to read the 100Reporters and Journalists for Transparency version of this story.
Contacted on his UNHCR email address, Momanyi — who now works in another country — referred questions to a UNHCR media spokesperson, who said she could not comment on individual staff members.
Reached by phone, Abdullahi's husband confirmed he had been resettled in Minnesota, but said any allegations of corruption were "false information."
"The U.S. government gave me resettlement to come to the United States but that's it. There's no bribe," he said. "She was rejected by the United States government. That issue, it's over… You know (in) America there's no bribes."
The allegations of corruption at the UNHCR are not limited to one man or one place. A seven-month investigation across five countries with significant refugee populations has found widespread reports of the UNHCR's staff members exploiting refugees, while victims and staff members who report wrongdoing say the agency fails to act against corruption, leaving them vulnerable to intimidation and retaliation.