STAFF at the United Nations headquarters in New York claimed tens of thousands of pounds in school fees for non-existent children, one of its most senior auditors has revealed.

Hundreds of employees also defrauded US tax authorities by claiming refunds for mortgage interest and property taxes that should have gone to the UN.

These are just two of the scams to be revealed in a book by Edwin Nhliziyo, chief auditor of the UN’s peacekeeping division until his retirement.

His account aims to expose how the UN is losing hundreds of millions of pounds through corruption and fraud.

From Kuwait to Cambodia and from Congo to New York, Nhliziyo says, employees were on the take. Some top officials turned a blind eye, he alleges, and conducted campaigns of “dirty tricks” against auditors such as himself who tried to stop the corruption.

“I am a believer in the UN, but like 90% of the serving staff members I think member states have allowed a handful of people to abuse the organisation. It is for this reason that I wrote my book,” Nlizhiyo said.

In 1996 he became one of the first auditors to examine the Iraq oil for food programme. But Nlizhiyo says he was pulled off the project before he could investigate further. In his book, he tells of two colleagues who went on a trip in 2001 to examine how funds were being spent on the programme. “They uncovered incidents of mismanagement and possible fraud,” he said.

However, when a draft of their report was sent to Benon Sevan, then programme director, he is said to have retorted: “If you had spent more time in the field auditing and not sleeping in hotel rooms, you would have found all the answers to your questions.”

The audit report never went out. But the auditors got their revenge when an inquiry into the scandal by Paul Volcker, the former US Federal Reserve chairman, accused Sevan of accepting cash bribes of up to $160,000. Sevan denied the charges.

Nhliziyo, a 61-year-old Zimbabwean, worked at Deloitte Haskins & Sells in New York before joining the UN in 1982. In 2000 he was appointed chief resident auditor in Congo. He describes how, on the outskirts of Kinshasa, 36 mobile satellite communications units each worth $160,000 lay untouched for more than a year.

He also found that a company had been paid millions for a contract which included charging the UN for the services of 28 employees to man two fire engines on an airfield that saw only two flights a week.

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