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By Matthew Russell Lee & sources, Exclusive

UN GATE, March 7 – Not a single week passing without new revelations by revolted insiders at UNESCO. After the spying scandal (here), now check that one out – a Morocco-Lichtenstein connection is sealing the corrupted pact between the Director general Audrey Azoulay and her Director of Cabinet Nicolas Kassianides.   

  A fish rots from the head: this echoes UNSG Antonio Guterres' unwillingness to answer questions about his son Pedro's business, and even ouster of the Press that asks. No second terms.

 For two years now, Inner City Press is exposing the countless financial and administrative transgressions perpetrated by the Head of Azoulay’s Cabinet, Nicolas Kassianides. Fraud, abuse of power, even the promotion of his mistress, the long list of wrongdoings largely justifies his immediate sacking from the organization.

Still, surprisingly to many, Audrey Azoulay never initiated any hostile move against him, even when Kacyanides became a political liability.    

Her conciliatory attitude is intriguing for both staff and ambassadors to UNESCO. It will not be anymore. The reasons for Azoulay’s generous pardoning of all errors by Kacyanides are the close business ties for years between the father of Audrey Azoulay, André Azoulay who is the senior advisor for economic affairs to the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, and the father-in-law of Nicolas Kacyanides, who is the Prosecutor General of Lichtenstein, Robert Wallner.

   Over the last decades, both Morocco and Lichtenstein have been considered as perfect places for tax evasion and money laundering. In June 2015, the European Commission again included Liechtenstein in its black list of tax havens. Still, the Prosecutor General of Lichtenstein Wallner is holding this position for some twenty years now. One can only imagine the number of files amassed in the safe box of his office, related to the opaque financial operations of the Moroccan peers of the realm.  Moreover, Liechtenstein is governed by a monarchy exactly like Morocco, which facilitates the baksheesh partnerships.  

 As a consequences, unless Nicolas Kassianides finds himself another job, or assumes openly a tragic decision, such as the one taken by ADG/Admin in the case of the deceased staff member Hadi Faraj (found on Inner City Press as  As Vaccinated Guterres Leaves UN Staff UNprotected An UNnecesary Death at UNESCO), the daughter of André Azoulay, will never initiate any disciplinary action against the son-in-law of the Prosecutor General of Lichtenstein who has accumulated in 20 years far too much knowledge about the tax evasion, money laundering and illegally acquired money concealed in Vaduz – all duly coordinated for Morocco by her father, the economic advisor of the Moroccan King. 

Personal interests in protecting the Azoulay’s family business will always have the upper hand and UNESCO will keep struggling for its subsistence under a regime with no respect for any of its forcing rules. The mandate of Azoulay as DG is limited in time, while economic relations are never-ending. So, the Morocco-Lichtenstein connection is granting for the time being full impunity to Kassianides to the detriment of UNESCO.  

Nicolas Kassianides is at the core of the five features depicting best the DG Azoulay Administration: incompetence, corruption, disorganization, lack of long-term vision and improvisation. The above explanation enlightens the motives for letting the administrative degradation of UNESCO unattended. After actively contributing to damaging UNESCO and its reputation, Kassianides is now looking for his next diplomatic destination. His efforts to get an ambassador’s position did not yet pay off, but with such a father-in-law, the pampered boy will never die from starvation. 

This new information explains as well the reasons for the Moroccan ambassador Samir Addahre to be totally docile and meek in dealing with Kassianides. Even after the frontal personal insults against him, Samir Addahre is still inviting Kassianides to enjoy frequently Moroccan couscous at his residency. This illustrates well the current submissiveness of some states, members of UNESCO.

Clearly, situation will not improve and the following questions will remain unanswered until the other member states decide to put some order in the agency: 1) When will member states request the DG of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay to assume the responsibility for the scandal that shakes UNESCO since last Monday about the team of French secret service agents accessing the UNESCO building with her approval? The DG of UNESCO is fully accountable for allowing the French agents to access and set up controlling devices over the information flow among ambassadors and senior diplomats.  The team liaised with the Chief of Azoulay’s Office, Mr. Flavio Bonetti, who was in his previous professional life a former deputy prefect of the Centre-Val de Loire region. Over the last two years, Inner City Press regularly exposed his role in coordinating the undercover surveillance operations by the French authorities at UNESCO (here  here here here and here.)

 2) The UK ambassador to UNESCO pointed out that the embezzlement allegations of financial impropriety and breach of rules were factual information and proved to be “a confirmed financial fraud”. So, who will be fired and who will reimburse the 430.000 US dollars? 

3) The personal contributions to UNESCO made by individuals. From an internal source, we hear that the Cabinet of Azoulay, headed by Kacyanides, instructed BFM (the Bureau of financial management) to make sure that Madam Azoulay would be able use those funds secretly. The donation of some 600.000 Euros to UNESCO, made by an Italian citizen disappeared in a undisclosed account. So, why then the Italian ambassador, Massimo Riccardo, is not asking for explanations? We will contact his Ministry for further clarifications.

 4)   What about ending and investigating the internal arrangements by the Cabinet of DG Azoulay granting impunity to those accountable for the unjustifiable and speculative spending of some 2 million dollars by UNESCO. In two separate contracts, one for 1.536.000 EURO, and another one for 180.000 EURO, UNESCO contracted a French company (with the benediction of the French DG) 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 and the UNESCO staff was instructed to do the job instead. In spite of those incriminating facts, both the chief officer of the core redesign project Sameer Pise and the initial coordinator of this scheme, Sachin Bhatt, remain fully protected by DG Azoulay and both got promoted by her. 

5) 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.  The family connections between Audrey Azoulay and Kassianides are catapulting to agony UNESCO. This is where UNESCO stands today, an agency visited by intelligence services at ease, ravaged by greed and financial misappropriations, propitious to the flourishing of abuse of power, corruption and nepotism. Watch this site.

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