According to Reuters:
North Korea was the supplier of a cache of defective weapons sold to Burundi’s army by a Ukrainian firm, said Western diplomats familiar with the case that has riled Burundi’s anti-corruption body.
The weapons deal with Burundi appeared to be a violation of the international ban on North Korean weapons exports which the U.N. Security Council imposed on Pyongyang in June 2009 after its second nuclear test, the diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The case involved the supply of some 60 Chinese-made .50-calibre machine guns to Burundi by a Ukrainian firm called Cranford Trading, the diplomats said. The weapons, which were defective, were sold to the firm by North Korea, they added.
Diplomats say Pyongyang continues to try to skirt the arms embargo. Last year South Africa informed the Security Council’s sanctions committee about a seizure of North Korean arms bound for Central Africa.
The expanded sanctions were aimed at cutting off North Korea’s arms sales, a vital export that was estimated to earn the destitute state more than $1 billion a year.
Some facts about the Burundi weapons deal became known late last year when the country’s anti-corruption watchdog went public about irregularities it found. It said that the arms had been defective and that Burundi had been overcharged.
A report on a state audit of the deal, seen by Reuters, concluded that Cranford Trading provided Burundi’s army defective military material with the complicity of former Defense Minister Germain Niyoyanka, current army chief Godefroid Niyombare and his deputy Diomede Ndegeya.
The auditors’ report said that the bidding offer was $3.075 million, while the amount in the contract was for $3.388 million. A further $1.186 million was paid in transport fees, even though such fees were not agreed in the contract.
The auditors concluded that the defense ministry had spent a great deal of money on defective material and recommended the prosecution of all people involved on suspicion of graft.
North Korea was not mentioned in the auditors’ report.
Several officials at Burundi’s U.N. mission in New York declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
NO CERTIFICATE OF ORIGIN
“The weapons were transferred by China to North Korea, which then sold them to Cranford,” a diplomat said, adding that the official documentation for the deal had been incomplete.
“There was no certificate of origin of the weapons, which is necessary to comply with international conventions,” the diplomat added. Another diplomat confirmed the remarks.
The contract between Burundi’s defense ministry and Cranford Trading covered the period between October 2008 through 2010. It was not clear how much North Korea would have received when it sold the defective arms to Cranford Trading.
It was not possible to track down Cranford Trading in Ukraine, since the company was not readily accessible in any public lists. Ukraine’s U.N. mission did not respond to an e-mailed query about Cranford and the arms transaction.
It was not clear when China transferred the weapons to North Korea, or who in China was responsible, or whether the Chinese government had knowledge of the deal.
The U.N. arms embargo does not ban the sale of small arms to Pyongyang, though it does require exporters to notify the Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee in advance about any small-arms sales to Pyongyang.
If the transfer took place after the latest round of U.N. sanctions were approved in June 2009, the exporter would have been required to notify the sanctions committee.
A spokesman for China’s U.N. mission was not available for comment.
The diplomats said the sanctions committee has not been notified about the Burundi case.
Read the full story here:
Defective Burundi weapons came from N.Korea
Reuters
Louis Charbonneau
2/1/2011
