Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 22 -- The claim of being a Central Africn Republic diplomat by bankrupt former professional tennis player Boris Becker has drawn laughter and a denial from the CAR. “The diplomatic passport that he has is a fake,” CAR foreign ministry chief of staff Cherubin Mologbama is quoted. But what aat about the photos of Becker with current president Faustin-Archange Touadéra, and those on the website of CAR's Embassy in Brussels, since taken down? On June 22, Inner City Press asked UN spokesman Farhan Haq, UN transcript here: Inner City Press: the former tennis… tennis star Boris Becker has said that he is a diplomat of the Central African Republic (CAR) and has diplomatic immunity.  The reason I'm asking you is that… number one, just on the off chance that the UN has any opinion or knowledge of passport control in the CAR, because it's… they've said it's a fake passport.

Deputy Spokesman:  That's not a UN issue.  I mean, we don't handle passport control in every country.

Question:  Noted… absolutely.  Noted publication the Economist in writing about the Boris… “l'affaire Boris Becker” said that there's a… there was a Nigerian billionaire known as Mr. Antonio Fernandez, who was both an ambassador of the CAR, officially, not contested, to the UN, and also an ambassador of Mozambique to the UN, and so my question that it made me think of is two things.  Number one, overall, does the UN have any provisions to make sure that the same individual is not listed as an ambassador to two countries?  And number two, I had asked Stéphane [Dujarric] maybe a week or two weeks ago, the day of the PGA [President of the General Assembly] election, in what capacity Carlos Garcia, formerly perm rep of El Salvador, shown in the Ng Lap Seng trial to have been involved in… in passing money from Ng Lap Seng to… to Francis Lorenzo, in what capacity he was… he was in the building.  Stéphane said, “if I find out”.  Did he try to find out?  Is there any way to know?

Deputy Spokesman:  Ultimately, these are questions that need to be addressed to the Governments for whom these individuals are working or are representing.  We don't speak for those Governments.  You know, questions having to do with who gets credentials from the Central African Republic would need to go to the Central African Republic Government.  What we do…

Inner City Press:  Right, but given… and I take the Economist at face value, can the same person have two passes, represent Mozambique and CAR?  Doesn't the UN have a system to make sure the same person doesn't have two countries?

Deputy Spokesman:  When people present diplomatic credentials to the UN, we work to make sure that those credentials are in order, so what we do is verify that those credentials are in order, but it's up to the Government to actually confer credentials." But how can the UN double credentil someone? And refuse to say how a UN bribery middle man is still in the UN building? Of the coverage so far, The Economist at least gets into some there diplomatic passport issues: "Antonio Deinde Fernandez, a Nigerian billionaire, served as the CAR’s ambassador to the UN for 18 years. Curiously, he had also served as a deputy ambassador to the UN for Mozambique." " So as Inner City Press has often asked, without answer, what checking does today's UN do of diplomats? Carlos Garcia of El Salvdor, shown to be involved in UN briber Ng Lap Seng's payments to Francis Lorenzo, was spotted by Inner City Press at the General Assemembly this month. Its question to Secretary General Antonio Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric has not been answered. Instead, Inner City Press unlike other no-show correspondents requires a minder to get to the GA stakeout, and on a pretext further restrictions are threatened. Becker may be corrupt - but today's UN *is* corrupt. As to the CAR, Inner City Press in 2013 reviewed a film about the Central African Republic, "The Ambassador" by Mads Brugger, opened in New York a year ago. Using hidden cameras it cover efforts to purchase diplomatic credentials from Liberia and to deal in conflict diamonds in the CAR under the Bozize government.

  A year later, Bozize has been thrown out -- although he has resurfaced in Paris. He was not ousted due to his corruption, but by the Seleka rebels, now themselves accused of child soldier recruitment and other abuses.

  While there is much hand-wringing, for example from European Union official Kristalina Georgieva and the UN's Valerie Amos, about the crisis in the CAR, the UN Security Council has not this month as expected passed any resolution about the country.

  As first covered by Inner City Press, the reason for inaction is that French Permanent Representative Gerard Araud and others in the French Mission are on vacation for the month, and France "holds the pen" to draft all resolutions in the Council on the CAR, as it does on other former French colonies like Cote d'Ivoire and Mali.

  In "The Ambassador" -- trailer here, 1.6 GB download for $8.50 here -- the CAR's head of state security Guy-Jean Le Foll Yamande says on hidden camera that it is France which "taught corruption" in the CAR. He is later tortured and killed.

  In full disclosure, Inner City Press appears in the film, in connection with exposing the reasons and results of the UN pulling out of Birao. Due to lack of planning by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, troops from the MINURCAT mission thrown out of Chad also left Birao in CAR -- and rebels took over the town immediately after that.

  The UN's DPKO has been run, for times in a row now, by Frenchmen. The current head of DPKO Herve Ladsous refuses to answer Press questions about his past, including during the Rwanda genocide in 1994, when he was France's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, arguing for the escape of the genocidaires into Eastern Congo.

Now Ladsous commanders an all-African Intervention Brigade to "neutralize" armed groups like M23 which Congolese leader Joseph Kabila doesn't like. Plus ca change.

While Liberia fought back against the film -- see for example Toga McIntosh's speech, here -- and while Brugger may have played a bit fast and loose, troubling questions remain about the head of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's Unity Party Varney Sherman.

A promise was made to Brugger, playing Mr. Cortzen, that he could get his credential when Johnson Sirleaf returned to Monrovia from the UN General Assembly in September 2010, and that the money he paid would go toward her re-election.

What is amazing almost two years after that General Assembly, and a year after the film opened in New York, is how little has been done. While again noting some unresolved question about whether some of the purported hidden camera video was in fact agreed to, we and the Free UN Coalition for Access recommend the film, including as journalism. Watch it.