These claims by the United States, supported by Japan, the two biggest donors to UNDP, pressured the secretary general to quickly order the audit.

"If there were simply the use of hard currency, or simply no site visits, that's one thing," said a UN diplomat familiar with the issue. "But when you combine the fact that large cash payments were made directly to officials of Kim's government with the fact there were no site visits to verify how the cash was being used, that's a great cause of concern."

The first phase of the audit is scheduled to begin Monday in New York. It remains unclear whether the auditors will attempt to visit North Korea. It is possible that even if the UNDP office were still open, Pyongyang would not have granted them visas.

Even with its limited scope, the audit could yield significant revelations about how the agency worked in a dictatorial, tightly controlled society.

"There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that they'd allow us to see what they did with all the cash they received," said a member of the diplomatic community in New York. "But UNDP headquarters and the country office should be able to tell us what kinds of checks they were making, were they paid in cash, what, who, where the money was going to."

The Board of Auditors had no comment for this article, but Morrison, the UNDP spokesman, said the organization was making arrangements to safeguard documents by transferring them to one of the other UN agencies in Pyongyang. He said that those necessary for the initial stages of the audit would be copied and carried to New York in electronic form by the UNDP chief in Pyongyang, who is due to leave North Korea within days.

But some suggest the mid-April deadline does not leave enough time to produce a thorough review.

"I don't think this is an audit you can whip through in 30 days; this may take some time," John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the UN until the end of last year and a staunch critic of the world body, said when contacted by the Tribune for a reaction to the newspaper's reporting of the cash payments. "But I think for the reputation and integrity of the UN system, it's critical that it proceed without delay."