Cash for computers: Is the U.N. busting its own sanctions in North Korea?

An agency of the United Nations has quietly shipped computers and sophisticated computer servers to the government of North Korea, despite ongoing U.N. sanctions against the regime for its efforts to build nuclear weapons, Fox News has learned.

The complicated method chosen by the Geneva-based agency, the U.N.’s World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, to carry out the transaction seems designed to bypass safeguards specifically created by U.N. authorities to prevent a repeat of previous U.N. scandals involving shipments to North Korea.

Among other things, procurement and payment for the WIPO goods appears to have been arranged between WIPO’s Geneva headquarters and China, bypassing the U.N. offices in North Korea. Those North Korean offices operate under a special oversight regime established after the last scandals erupted in 2008 over financial and technology transfers in North Korea, to ensure that money and goods do not end up in the regime’s nuclear programs.