The Tribunal works to bring to trial senior leaders of Democratic Kampuchea and those who were most responsible for the crimes and serious violations of Cambodian penal laws, international humanitarian law and custom and international conventions recognized by Cambodia that were committed from April 1975 through January 1979.                                                                  
Various reports in the latter part of 2006 raised concerns about transparency of hiring procedures of the ECCC. UNDP took these allegations very seriously. As an immediate response, and in order to protect the integrity of the work, UNDP brought in Candide Consulting, a Malaysia-based audit company, to look into these allegations under the supervision of the UNDP Office of Audit and Performance Review (OAPR). The first phase of the audit took place from 29 January to 2 February 2007 and was concluded on 8 February and the second phase from 27 to 30 March 2007 that included auditors from OAPR. The auditors received cooperation from the ECCC. The draft audit covers human resources management practices of the Cambodian side of the ECCC.

The draft internal audit report has been shared with the Cambodian side of the ECCC. We are considering options and actions, taking into consideration the response from ECCC, as is the practice with all audits.(1 )

We believe in the importance of the work of the ECCC, and at the same time, we want to ensure the correct utilization of donor funds. Our aim is to move forward with the work of the tribunal, without sacrificing the integrity of the funds supporting it.

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(1) Internal audit reports are an essential part of the internal oversight function that management uses to obtain assurance that control mechanisms are functioning as is planned and also identify deficiencies that need to be remedied. It is standard practice at the UN that these reports are not released to the public. The overall results of the UNDP audit reports are communicated on an annual basis to the UNDP Executive Board in the form of an annual report on Internal Audit and Oversight activities. However, UNDP internal audit reports are available to the independent external UN Board of Auditors. The results of UNDP’s external audits can be found at http://www.unsystem.org/auditors/.