Few weeks ago Pak peace keepers were accused of doing something similar.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070713/wl_sthasia_afp/drcongorebelsunindia
KINSHASA (AFP) - Indian UN peacekeepers have been accused of gold trafficking with Rwandan Hutu rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to UN documents and witnesses.
The UN soldiers serving in DR Congo exchanged food and information for gold and dollars for some months in 2005 and 2006, several officials from the UN mission there (MONUC) told AFP, on condition of anonymity.
The exchange took place with rebels of the chiefly Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), they said.
The Indian MONUC troops in Nord-Kivu province were based at Nyabiondo, more than 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of the provincial capital, Goma.
MONUC spokesman Kemal Saiki said Friday that the UN’s internal investigation department, based in Nairobi, had opened an inquiry as soon as the mission had been made aware of allegations concerning gold trafficking.
But he was unable to say when the investigation had begun or what period it covered.
The UN also said Friday that it was rushing an audit team to the DRC this weekend to probe the allegations.
The team will work with all levels of MONUC to get a full picture of the various allegations and will “evaluate management processes related to the maintenance of good order and discipline in the mission,” a UN statement said.
It will then make recommendations to UN headquarters on how to strengthen management on the issue.
In a confidential note dated July 2006 to one of MONUC’s top officials, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, a mission official recommended that a senior Indian officer be immediately sent back to New Delhi.
“Serious allegations have been made” against the officer, “to the effect that he and other Indian officers acting under his instructions have been trading in gold,” the note stated.
It said that “some North Kivu Brigade have sold their rations, reportedly for gold”, adding that “the rations have come on sale in the market at Nyabiondo”.
A spokesman for the Indian defence ministry declined to comment on Friday but a top army official in New Delhi said “the military establishment is checking the veracity of the charges with the concerned authorities in the UN.”
The area of Nyabiondo has long been under the control of the FDLR, which works the gold mines there.
The FDLR has been based in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, bordering Rwanda and Uganda, for the past 13 years and is seen as a major source of instability in the Great Lakes region.
Many of its members are suspected of taking part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which, according to the United Nations, Hutu extremists killed some 800,000 ethnic minority Tutsis and Hutu moderates.
FDLR officers, whose statements AFP obtained, described close links in the summer of 2006 between FDLR commanders and UN peacekeepers at Nyabiondo, who fed them advance information of anti-rebel operations.
One rebel officer said a military operation by MONUC-backed Congolese army forces against the rebels, which took place in Virunga Park area in October 2005, had no impact because “the FDLR was informed about the exact time and location of the operation 10 days in advance”.
Pakistani UN troops based in the northeastern Ituri area in 2005 have been embroiled in similar allegations of trading in gold and guns with Congolese militia they were meant to be disarming.
In May, the commander of the Pakistani contingent dismissed the allegations as “proposterous, malicious and baseless.”