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In Corrupt UN of Guterres DG Audrey Azoulay Hands UNESCO to France Sources Tell Banned Inner City Press

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive, Video

UN GATE, Dec 20 –  From the corrupt UN of Antonio Guterres in New York, the whole UN system has been corrupted, including UNESCO.

   Earlier this month Inner City Press exposed the declining influence of France at UNESCO, highlighting that at the General Conference of UNESCO in Paris for the first time since the foundation of the organization in November 1945 France ended with the lowest number of votes in the elections for a seat at the Executive Board of UNESCO. Now this:

Following the exposure by Inner City Press of several internal scandals, the administration of the French DG Azoulay has lost its temper and started a witch-hunt but never dropped of sight its narrow French-benefiting objectives.  Member states still let it go to an unimaginable ever before extent, although several, especially from the north of Europe, are definitely not at ease and the disturbing facts start to provoke some real questionings. 

One of the main concerns raised recently is the composition of the Jury of the UNESCO Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize.  This Prize is intended to honor individuals and public or private institutions that have made a significant contribution to promoting, seeking, safeguarding or maintaining peace, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution of UNESCO. The Prize was established in 1989 in order for UNESCO “to reaffirm its commitment to peace and dialogue between cultures and civilizations”. Since its establishment, the Director-General has called on to sit on the Jury panel international public figures who are reputed for their action on behalf of peace. 

The question several member states raised during a recent meeting is how come that after her election, the DG Azoulay decided right away to appoint two French personalities as members of the Jury.  One is Michel Camdessus, who was the Director of the Treasury and Governor of the Banque de France and the other is Francois Hollande, the former French President who actually approved the candidacy of Audrey Azoulay for the position of UNESCO’s Director general in 2017.

Such a conflict of interest and abuse of power is appalling, said one diplomat based in Paris to Inner City Press. The rules of the Prize must be modified in order to avoid such blatant influence and interference of internal French politics with UNESCO’s noble activities, he added.  Then in 2019, DG Azoulay decided to step-up her involvement in the French political life by giving a clear support to the candidate for the  position of Mayor of Paris to her good friend Cedric Villani, who was appointed by DG Azoulay as member of the High-Level Reflection Group created by UNESCO for advising on its transformation.

This is another but first-ever example of the use and misuse of UNESCO by the Director general Azoulay who is intentionally ignoring all rules and diplomatic practices in order to give a helping hand and international visibility to her political French friend in the elections to be held early next year.  This is also the first juncture for getting into serious trouble with her mentor and protector, the current French President Emanuel Macron.

As political observers in France underline, nowadays the Villani-Griveaux political duel irritates and exasperates Macron to the utmost. “The President of the French Republic is in a hurry to end the fratricidal confrontation in Paris by the two eminent members of his political movement and he clearly did not appreciate to have Audrey Azoulay taking a side in this unpleasant for him rivalry”, said one political expert based in Paris to Inner City Press. 

The major top question remaining here is, “why the hell DG Azoulay is allowed to get UNESCO involved into French politics to that extend”, said to Inner City Press a member of an EU country here in New York. “Those are clearly political games with huge long-term consequences that will undermine utterly the credibility of UNESCO as a depoliticized organization”.  We will have more on that. In the meantime, still no progress on the IOS investigations on the following major pending cases at UNESCO:    

1) The first-time undercover surveillance operation at UNESCO that is coordinated by Flavio Bonetti from the Cabinet of Audrey Azoulay and former deputy prefect of the Centre-Val de Loire region, with the assistance of the Cabinet expert in dirty work, Mr Sachin Bath. Who will be reprimanded for helping the administration massively invading the personal rights and freedoms of staff and of member states’ representatives?  

2) The administrative deviation of hierarchical reporting lines - the Director of Cabinet Nicolas Kassianides unprecedented power to control and supervise the Deputy Director general of UNESCO and the Assistant Directors general of the program Sectors. This is disrupting the work of the entire Organization, since at the top of it there is evident no respect for regular lines of authority.  

3) The staff members cases lost in Geneva where UNESCO got sentenced by the ILOAT to pay hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ money. IOS must investigate the work of the senior staff members in HRM dealing with contested cases, namely A. Grisar and A. Duganis. A sanction that would certainly put an end to this persisting detrimental situation in dealing with personnel files, is an automatic wage withholding of HRM managers so as to reimburse the financial loss for the Organization provoked by their incompetence in dealing with contested files.  

4) Some important elements are missing in the report by IOS after the investigation on the functioning of the transportation unit of UNESCO.  The Director of the Cabinet Nicolas Kassianides, is still using an official car without being entitled to do so. Even more unacceptable is the fraud with petrol orchestrated by the French driver of Audrey Azoulay. IOS may complete its report with a note on the use of the gasoline paid with public money for the private cars of those close to Kassianides and Azoulay  

5) The appointment of dozens French officials in the Cabinet of the DG Azoulay in an effort to turn UNESCO into a branch of Quai d’Orsay and the consultancy contracts for the children of several Ambassadors to UNESCO.  

6) The misuse of tax-payers money in large proportions. The financial services of Azoulay authorized a payment of some 450,000 US dollars to an unknown financial institution in London. After effecting the payment, those funds vanished in someone’s pocket. Still no disciplinary measures taken in the corrupted UNESCO of Audrey Azoulay.  

7) The special internal arrangement by the Cabinet of D-G Azoulay granting impunity to those accountable for the unjustifiable and speculative spending of some 2 million dollars by UNESCO without compensation. In two separate contracts, one for 1.536.000 EURO, and another one for 180.000 EURO, UNESCO contracted a French company to do the core redesign of the organization’s financial and administrative systems and tools. Subsequently, those amounts had been paid to the French enterprise without getting the expected deliverables. Anyone will go to jail or the responsible officer will rather get promoted?  

8) The Culture sector was poorly reformed by DD Audrey Azoulay and her assistant director general for Culture, the Chilean Ernesto Ottone Ramirez.  Staff in the Culture sector are blaming openly the arrogant and heavy-handed management style of Ottone Ramirez with even some dark and very UN talks of a "baby-Pinochet."  Will IOS evaluate the negative impact for UNESCO of this reform of the Culture Sector?  

9) UNESCO launched the “Revive the Spirit of Mosul” initiative ostensibly to participate in the reconstruction of this city, after years of war and destruction.  This seemingly noble initiative was in fact a cover up operation of reinforcing French influence in Iraq in order to secure markets and work for French companies. The Director of the UNESCO office in Baghdad, Louise Haxthausen, was removed straight away, since she was considered by Kassianides too close to the government of Iraq after her several years of experience in the country, and too independent in her dealing with issues that progressively became sensitive for French national interests. Focusing on Mosul is having a plain and simple rationalization. Most of the millions received by UNESCO from the United Arab Emirates are for projects to be implemented in that particular city. Thus, in corrupted UNESCO, the dirt keeps on oozing this time in the context of Iraq.  According to a member of the Cabinet of Azoulay, the transactions of UNESCO in Mosul are among the most well-kept secrets in the House. The Cabinet member even considers that a number of parallel dealings are most probably piloted by some specialized French services.    “Kassianides is clearly taking instructions elsewhere”, said one of our sources in the Cabinet. “As a former staff of Quai d’Orsay, and being fully aware that his days in UNESCO are counted, he must keep good relations with his former administration in order to get a good position there after successfully defending the French national interest under the cover of multilateral UN work”. Would all that be ever investigated in the corrupted UN of Guterres? Guterres is corrupt.   

Some member states are questioning this lack of internal control and disciplinary measures. Others, mainly from the European Union support blindly this way of doing business and some of them even appear delighted to have their tax-payers money dilapidated by UNESCO. This political stance is actually a green light to DG Azoulay for her to keep up with those practices and scale them up with extra budgetary money, from which, no doubt, a fat percentage will go into the deep pockets of the senior UNESCO administrators.   We will have more on all that. Watch this site.

***

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