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GENEVA - U.N. workers in Nairobi helped collect millions of dollars in the 1990s by preying on refugees desperate to leave Africa for new lives in North America, Europe and Australia, U.N. investigators said on Friday.

Investigators said the ring charged its victims, some who had fled for their lives, fees for free U.N. services, and even plotted to kill the U.S. ambassador in a scheme they hoped would be blamed on Osama bin Laden, investigators said.

The U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services said the corruption had been "common knowledge" among staff at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Nairobi, private security officers and local refugees.

Investigators condemned the UNHCR for having ignored reports of corruption and strong-arm tactics for too long.

The UNHCR took issue with some conclusions about the allegations, in findings of a probe launched in 2000, but expressed shame and vowed not to let corruption take root again.

Nine people, including three local UNHCR staff, have been charged with fraud by Kenyan authorities and their trials continue. More arrests could follow, according to UNHCR.

"The criminal enterprise described in the report did not appear overnight, but in its evolution, successive management of the Nairobi branch office should have seen that corruption was seeping into the core operations of their office," the report by the oversight body said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister who took over UNHCR in January 2001, said in a statement that he was "shamed and outraged".

"There is no excuse, no defence, for such contemptible behaviour. Those who prey on poor and desperate refugees must be punished to the full extent of the law," he said.

Lubbers became head of the agency three months after the UNHCR asked the oversight body to investigate when its own probe proved inconclusive.

"It shows that in an era of mass migration, global organised crime, human trafficking and smuggling, we are not immune to criminal infiltration," Lubbers added.

Kenya is host to some 250,000 refugees, mostly from Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, but also Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

An unknown number paid the criminal network -- alleged to involve some 70 people -- $1,500 to $5,000 per person to emigrate to Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States, according to the report.

"They demanded and received money from refugees desperate for resettlement for UNHCR services...which were, in fact, free of charge," the report said.

"The criminal enterprise would arrange to substitute and resettle persons, including refugees not deserving resettlement, in the place of deserving refugees, thus unduly depriving the latter of possible resettlement," it added.

Frank Montil, senior investigator for the oversight body, said that fees had varied.

"For instance, to try to obtain entry to the UNHCR compound in Nairobi to be interviewed, it could cost $25 at the gate and maybe $100-$200 to be interviewed," he told a news conference.

The three UNHCR staff are also charged with conspiring to threaten to kill five people, including the U.S. ambassador in Kenya, the report said.

The alleged plot, which was not carried out, was to send threatening letters using the name of Saudi-born Islamic militant bin Laden, it added.

Bin Laden is blamed for the U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi in August 1998 and for the more recent September 11 attacks in the United States.

Dileep Nair, under-secretary-general for internal oversight services, warned that unscrupulous people could again prey on desperate refugees fighting for a new life.

"We have to be ever-vigilant and constantly on our toes to make sure these things don't reoccur," he said. Nampa-Reuters