Inner City Press: Investigative Reporting from the United Nations

Ban Ki-moon At $1200 Wall St Event Avoids Myanmar & Yemen, Red Car to Blue House

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 16 -- Outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon headlined a $1200 a ticket event on Wall Street on Friday night. Hours after he had answered a pre-selected questions about Aleppo, Syria by reading from notes, he attended an event where he'd previously been put together with Macau-based businessman Ng Lap Seng, now under house arrest for UN bribery involving Ban's Secretariat.

But Ban has his eye on the Blue House, South Korea's presidential palace. In front of 55 Wall Street on Friday night, with its own velvet rope and carpet, was a red “Lamborghini Huracan, V-10 naturally aspirated 610 horsepower.” Photo here.

This glitzy display, bitterly dubbed the “Aleppo mobile,” was courtesy of the United Nations Correspondents Association. Inner City Press, which quit UNCA in 2012 and, after UNCA threatened to get it thrown out of the UN, actually was in 2016 by Ban and his head of communications Cristina Gallach, covered the event from the sidewalk outside. Periscope I here.

   Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson came over for a handshake; at least one Permanent Five member of the Security Council's Permanent Representative came to joke. But the travesty made at and of the UN by Ban Ki-moon and his UN Censorship Alliance is no joke. Periscope II here.

When Ban Ki-moon held his last staged press conference on December 16, he took only six questions, not only of them critical.

There was nothing on the UN under his leadership bringing cholera to Haiti and killing over 10,000 people, nor on his peacekeepers' rapes of children in the Central African Republic.

Ban read from notes in response to several, including the first set-up question about his upcoming run for the South Korean presidency.

   In Ban's opening remarks he mentioned South Sudan, but not the day's real news, that the UN Mission there gave weapons to warlord James Koang, who killed civilians. Unlike at Ban's “press” conference, Inner City Press was able to ask for example UK Ambassador Rycroft, and the New Zealand foreign minister, about South Sudan, video here.

   Inner City Press which on December 15 was the ONLY media to ask questions at the day's UN noon briefing, and which put its name first on the list to ask a question to Ban, was not called on by Ban's outgoing spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

   So at the end, while there was still time, Inner City Press asked quite audible about Myanmar, and Ban's brother Ki-ho doing mining there after being on a UN delegation. Vine here. Ban did not answer this - surreally, he came over to shake hands. Video here.

Nor did Ban answer about the pending Ng Lap Seng UN bribery case, in which the Macau-based businessman bought a document from Ban's Secretariat and held events with no due diligence by Ban's head of Communications Cristina Gallach.

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