Company donates services to UN to screen out risky vendors

The United Nations is now better able to screen prospective contractors and other partners for any involvement in criminal activity -- such as money laundering, drug trafficking or terrorist financing -- with the donated assistance of the world's leading researcher of such information, a humanitarian official announced today.

The company, World-Check, joins Eriksson, which provides communications, and DHL, which assists in logistics, as private sector partners for swifter and more effective emergency humanitarian response, particularly crucial in such large-scale disasters as the Indian Ocean tsunami of late 2004, said Kevin Kennedy, Director of the Coordination and Response Division of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“This really came out of the humanitarian agencies in trying to extend our own range of common services available to agencies in humanitarian response and this is just one more part of the repertoire,” Mr. Kennedy told the press at UN Headquarters in New York today.

Agencies that will use World Check's services include the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Food Programme (WFP), as well as OCHA.

World-Check's database, which is updated daily in real-time by its international research team, is derived from hundreds of thousands of public sources covering over 240 countries and territories.

The intelligence gathered from these open sources is consolidated and organized into highly-structured profiles on each and every entity. According to OCHA, World-Check data will be used to screen for risky individuals throughout the system, with a particular emphasis on contractors involved in reconstruction following the tsunami.

The company currently serves more than 1,600 financial institutions and government agencies in 120 countries and its clients include 43 of the 50 largest financial institutions in the world, as well as hundreds of government agencies, OCHA said.