When
Argentina Refused To Pay
Business Class For UN
Interpreters Pollard Used
Threats and Other Funds
Eschews Economy
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS
GATE, February 22 – With the
UN Office of South South
Cooperation so recently
exposed as a bribery vehicle
in the Ng Lap Seng - President
of the UN General Assembly
John Ashe corruption
prosecution, the vacuous media
coverage to date of the
upcoming OSSC conference in
Argentina has been
particularly revealing of the
flabby propaganda in which
today's UN drapes itself. But
now this: Argentina is in a
financial crisis and so some
months ago informed UN Under
Secretary General Catherine
Pollard that it would not be
able to meet its obligation to
pay to fly the UN interpreters
to the conference in business
class.
USG
Pollard assured Argentina that
should could get "her"
interpreters to waive their UN
right to business class on a
trip of this length. But
Pollard is not as persuasive
as she thought. There was push
back, and a secondary crisis
loomed.
Lo and
behold, a classic UN solution.
Pollard said she could get
interpreters to "volunteer" to
fly economy - by threatening
those who refused with
retribution. This Guterres
gambit appears to have worked;
Pollard brags that enough have
volunteers, some cajoled with
the promise of a compensated
day of rest that all member
states, rather than conference
host Argentina, will pay for.
But
Catherine Polland, of course,
will not herself deign to fly
economy. No, she will fly
business class as always - as
corrupt as the boss of today's
UN, the censor, Antonio
Guterres, whose spokesman
Stephane Dujarric refuses to
answer any Press questions on
these topics. A fish rots, and
continues to rot more and
more, from the head. Watch
this site.
Background: the
Office of South South
Cooperation can’t seem to
escape the legacy of the John
Ashe scandal. When he took the
helm in the aftermath, Jorge
Chediek promised to completely
reform the Office by ordering
what ultimately proved to be
an unsuccessful audit,
catapulting the Office into
even more pervasive
corruption. Instead of working
on agency mandated development
work, Mr. Chediek plays tin
pot dictator, his staff tell
Inner City Press, having
formed a sizeable patronage
network, which he uses to
advance his personal agenda.
As a result, an environment of
mediocrity and abuse of power
prevails in the Office. Over
the past year, Mr. Chediek has
engaged the services of
friends from Latin America, in
seeming violation of UNDP
regulations. Since
2017 Chediek has been
engaging the services of
Bernardo Kliksberg, an
Argentinian economist, who
according to the Office
website is listed as Strategic
Advisor for South South
Cooperation occasionally
writing short news articles
for the Office’s website to
which Mr. Chediek attaches his
name. (In the span of 14
months, Mr. Kliksberg has
written 8 articles). This is a
seemingly wasteful engagement
in line with the general waste
of UN resources, as there is
already a strategic
communications advisor in
addition to other senior
advisors on Mr. Chediek’s
payroll. While rank and file
candidates must follow a
rigorous UN recruitment
process, friends of Mr.
Chediek get to jump the line
for positions, thanks to his
utter disregard for UNDP
policy.
According to a Facebook post
from April 2018 an MoU was
signed between the Office for
South South Cooperation and
the University of Buenos Aires
to establish a chairship of a
South South programme at
theUniversity, which also
happens to be Mr. Chediek’s
alma mater. Both Mr. Chediek
and Mr. Kliksberg now serve as
co-chairs of this programme in
the University where Mr.
Kliksberg has close ties,
having served as chair of
several other academic
programmes. The chairship,
against thecontext of Mr.
Chediek already having engaged
the professional services of
Mr. Kliksberg, is a blatant
conflict of interest in
violation of UN Staff Rule 1.2
which governs the conditions
for outside employment,
regardless of whether there is
remuneration for the
particular engagement.
Moreover, appointments like
this one violate the UN terms
on retention of service,
particularly section 3, which
outlines the conditions for
the contracting of
services.
And while Mr. Chediek uses
UNDP resources for the
services of prolific
economists to elevate his
stature, the Government of
Argentina, recently bailed out
by the IMF, plans to drop a
few million on an Office of
South South Cooperation
conference, BAPA+40 this
March. Macri’s government may
have to answer to the scores
of angry Argentinians already
fed up with harsh austerity
measures as to why it is
prioritizing the funding of a
conference by a historically
corrupt UN office. Mr. Chediek
has been using the preparation
for this conference to justify
the continued retention of his
close friends. BAPA+40, which
aims to bring international
actors together to solve
development issues, in
reality, is simply a front for
Mr. Chediek’s personal
ambitions....
***
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