In Other Media-eg CJR, Independent, Fox, New Statesman, AJE, FP, NYT,  CSM Click here to contact us     .

By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT CEFC Video

UN GATE, Oct 26 – Antonio Guterres is killing the UN, including with his failure in Cameroon and elsewhere and his lawless censorship of Press, now at 365 days, a full year. He's put the UN in the Press Freedom Tracker, here. And so on 3 July 2019, this video.

   The day after being targeted and roughed up by Guterres' guard Ronald E. Dobbins and another unnamed, Inner City Press went to the NYPD's 17th Precinct with its torn shirt and damaged laptop to file a complaint. At first it was told, flatly, that the UN is entirely immune. Then once they heard the story, the NYPD took down a complaint. But the UN including its "investigator" Ben Swanson of OIOS, shown here, have done nothing about it.

Swanson confirmed receipt, as with Inner City Press' formal written complaint about Guterres' financial failure to disclose and conflict of interest in banning Inner City Press, no action: "From: Ben Swanson <swanson1@un.org> Date: Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 1:34 AM Subject: Re: Informing OIOS of "REPORT OF PROHIBITED CONDUCT (HARASSMENT, ABUSE OF AUTHORITY) AND ‘FORMAL COMPLAINT’ SUBMITTED [ABOUT] SECRETARY GENERAL, MR ANTONIO GUTERRES, PURSUANT TO ST/SGB/2008/5" please confirm receipt and what OIOS does To: Matthew Lee @ Inner City Press Cc: FUNCA @ funca.info, Heidi Mendoza <mendozah@un.org>, Michelle Claudio <claudio@un.org>, Byung-Kun Min <min2@un.org>   Dear Mr Lee   Thank you for your email and attachments the contents of which have been noted and will be dealt with in accordance with our standard practices.    Ben Swanson  l  Director l  Investigations Division l Office of Internal Oversight Services  l  United Nations Headquarters New York l Office +1 212 963 0597 | Mobile +1 917 288 7459."

 Fourteen months and two weeks later - nothing. The UN is entirely corrupt.

  Now still banned Inner City Press publishes this complaint that Swanson and others have received - we publish now and ask later, as Guterres' Spokesman Dujarric has refused to answer Inner City Press' questions even on UN rapes, despite having promised on camera to answer questions, totally corrupt: "From: [Whistleblower] Date: Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 12:21 PM Subject: Request for an independent investigation for UNMIK CMS Ms. Sandi ARNOLD To: OIOS-NY <oios-ny-unhq@un.org>, OIOS-Directors <oios-directors-unhq@un.org>, OIOS-UNMIK <oios-unmik-unhq@un.org>, ethicsoffice <ethicsoffice@un.org> Cc: Donna Dottey <dottey@un.org>, James Finniss <finniss@un.org>, Violas Otieno <otienov@un.org>, Fabrizio Hochschild <hochschild@un.org>, Ben Swanson <swanson1@un.org>, Atul Khare <khare@un.org>, Chhaya Kapilashrami [UNO365] <kapilashrami@un.org>, Martha Helena Lopez <lopez22@un.org>, DMSPC-OUSG-MEU <meu@un.org>, Field Central Review Bodies <fcrb@un.org>  

Good afternoon,I would like to request that an independent investigation be launched immediately into Ms.Sandi ARNOLD’s reiterated sexual and management abuses which have been occurring for the past years against staff members in UNMIK. Ms. ARNOLD serves in the capacity of Chief Mission Support, UNMIK, at D1 level. Ms. ARNOLD employs a sexual approach when dealing with professional matters at work: she makes use of obscenities during meetings and in multiple occasions she approaches women subordinates with unwelcome, sexual comments.Whomever dares to disagree with her and go against her decisions is pushed out from work or is subjected to complete isolation in the office, deprived of professional interactions and career development opportunities (training, TDY opportunities etc.) Ms. ARNOLD often displays aggressive behavior and shouts at any staff who dares to challenge her.  She is fond of giving speeches in which she uses sexual comparison terms and mentions in the end that she is a proud lesbian.  Most staff find this behavior intolerable and highly offensive, however they are afraid to complain fearing that their jobs will be affected. Only Ms. ARNOLD’s friends benefit of professional opportunities(career development, training and assignments in New York and TDYs in other missions). Thanks to this management style (including sending staff on TDY to NY for three months and more) the past budget of UNMIK led to an overspent of more than 200,000 USD. This "volunteer" support to HQ, paid by UNMIK, was only to please her friends, promote them and get her the possibility to gain further promotion to D2.Ms. ARNOLDlikes to brainwash her subordinates, males and females, and comments about their dress code and physical appearance. She makes disparaging comments towards them and does not take into consideration the psychological damages and offenses affecting the staff who have no opportunity to defend themselves.Nepotism is vastly practiced at UNMIK Mission Support Division.  Ms. ARNOLD has recruited staff without the consent and approval of the hiring managers, claiming that she  had an agreement with New York and if you want to complain, you can protest to the  USG.Ms. ARNOLD has fostered a cult of personality and a patriarchal management, with a culture of harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying staff and abusing constantly her power. For instance, she published on the wall of the conference room the list of the Staff who passed the SCOR training and who did not. This situation created an enormous stress to all Staff who failed the exam because she mentioned that everybody should have passed it if they want to keep their jobs. Recently she enrolled staff without their consent for another training at UNMIK (not mandatory) like PRINCE II Practicioner. Staff were so demotivated by this harassment that nobody passed the exam and many did not want to participate to it, fearing to be blamed and humiliated. The result of it is  a waste of resources (staff doing the training who were not interested in) and money (the cost of the trainer) for the organization.  These are violations  and as well as  harassment that nobody had the power to challenge.She treats everybody as her personal employees. She demands that a national staff goes on daily basis to buy food and prepares breakfast for her, and her friends if she has guests, in the office before working hours (washing and preparing salads, cooking eggs, buying her favorite bread). When something is missing or not in accordance to the instruction, Ms.ARNOLDS shouts at her, even in public.She uses a second National Staff (Administrative Assistant)  as her personal driver and assistant  for home commissions including laundry, utilities payments and supermarket runs. The Staff keeps the car with her at home once the CMS is not even in Mission Area.It can be verified with the car log and this is an abuse of authority and mismanagement Ms. Arnold uses to leave her credit car to this lady and to pay her holidays to keep her silence.Both National Staff cannot report this situation for fear of retaliation. Nobody can accept to be paid by the UN and instead becomes a personal maid for only personal matters.Whilst she travels to New York on business class for official duty, she is pushing the staff (other than her friends) to fly economy class or travel by car for any official business. Ms.ARNOLD claims for full airport expenses (on duty) even though her UN driver comes to deposit and collect her at the airport all the time.  Despite the restrictions for everybody in the UN, she is constantly flying (business class) for official business not related to her administrative duties.Ms. ARNOLD has managed to create a unique, toxic and unprofessional management style.  She recruits mainly females for her personal agenda. Ms. ARNOLD’s unethical approach stretches so far that she provides sexual suggestions to her female subordinates on how to reach orgasms.  She has also given sex toys as gifts to female staff.Ms. ARNOLD obnoxiously tells everyone that she has protection from above and that nobodycan investigate or punish her.  The work environment in UNMIK is very unhealthy and detrimental to staff, due to her abuses.  Many staff find themselves in need of counselling in order to be able to conduct their work. It is very easy to verify it directly with the former Staff Counselor, Ms. Maria Murillo. She is in a position of authority but does not deserve the honor to serve under the United Nations flag. This is what happens in UNMIK.Ms. ARNOLD is the mastermind of the corrupted process of rostering exercises  for CJOs  and PSJOs in DOS and in the Mission. For the last three years she oversees these selections, which are a monopoly for friends and friends of friends. In a time where the UN is reducing posts and expenses everywhere, she creates posts for friends like the new positions of P5 Chief Service Delivery and P5 Chief Supply Chain. The Mission has limited logistic activities with no aircrafts and limited movcon activities with only site to run (Mitrovica) and she gets a new P5 post. More important, she gets free business class ticket to go home whilst she is recruiting friends plus dsa.  She tells to everybody that she  is drafting all assessment tests, creating the panels, marking everything at P4, P5 and D1level at DOS and then always sitting or chairing the interview panels. It is well known that she calls for decreasing the passing score at exams in order to allow friends to pass it or to call to fail others that passed it. She did also for the P4 Administrative post in Pristina where she cleared the wife of a Colleague (external) and a lady at F6 just to give them the clearances.   Is this situation normal? Or must it be accepted because the CMS is providing expensive gifts to any persons that counts and she is including in the roster only the desired persons?A clear example is in UNMIK where for any position, even at FS5 level where hundreds of rostered candidates are present, she ALWAYS got the permission from FPD for PSJOs. Without even considering to recruit anybody coming from closing or downsizing missions.A P4 post in Administration was kept vacant for more than two years (nobody was physically present in UNMIK) and then an FS5 was recommended by her for a PSJO post FS6 in Belgrade and then promoted in two years to P4. From FS5 to P4 in two years if you are part of the clan.Mr. Adylor will also enjoy a relocation grant from Belgrade to Pristina, authorized by Ms. Arnold, of which he has no title for it. This gift from the UN is actually ongoing and should be stopped.Many of her friends were also cleared by her for P4 Administrative roster, diminishing the passing score, and assessing them at the interviews. The fact that her friends and girlfriend have a specific role in HQ, gives her the power to do whatever she wants in terms of recruitment and for rostering purposes both in the Mission and HQ. She calls and then somebody has passed or failed the exam.It is imperative that an investigation, ruled by persons outside UNMIK, is conducted as soon as possible with interviews of staff and protective measures are put in place to protect witnesses from retaliation.It is required that Ms. Arnold`s Delegation of Authority and presence at any stage of recruitment  will be withdrawn in order to prevent the reiteration of the above mentioned abuses and mismanagement. FPD should make any possible efforts in having a full rotation of panel members for CJOs and should be vigilant for any PSJOs that are done uniquely to selects friends and not the best candidate.The authorof this email chose to write under an anonymous name for fear of reprisal which has been already occurred and occurring in UNMIK.This email will be  shared in order to stop this ongoing situation and to prevent" -- retaliation, so common in Guterres' increasingly corrupt UN.

  In Guterres' UN there has been entirely unaddressed bribery, including offers of weapons for oil by UN non governmental organization China Energy Fund Committee of Ye Jianming which Guterres refuses to even audit - while roughing up and banning the Press which asks him about it. On December 21 after Guterres and his spokesman had not answered a single one of Inner City Press' 35 written questions during the week and Guterres prepared  to take off on another 11 day trip to Lisbon, still-banned Inner City Press reported and shows that Guterres has essentially killed off the UN's already weak public financial disclosure system. Guterres' own most recent online disclosure is from 2016, here, and it omits for example his listed role through 2018 in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Now this, which we have reported exclusively, well before the July 2019 reporting that CEFC's Y Jianming gave an expensive diamond to Hunter Biden - the China Energy Fund Committee, implicated in the UN bribery conviction of Patrick Ho, has been linked to Guterres' Gulbenkian, see photos here and for first example here: "Partex Oil and Gas (Holdings) Corporation will be sold to the CEFC China Energy group, confirmed António Costa Silva, the chairman of the oil company of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, speaking to Portuguese daily newspaper Público.

Costa Silva said the “complex negotiation is underway” and added “I think there is a great possibility of it coming to fruition,” and the newspaper reported said that this deal could be worth 500 million euros.

“It is a large Chinese conglomerate that started in refining, terminals, logistics, recently started exploration and production in the Middle East, Russia, and chose Partex as a kind of platform for investments in the first segment,” said the chairman of Partex." So this is a direct conflict of interest by Guterres: he has been on the board of Gulbenkian, which made a sale to CEFC which Guterres now refuses to audit. (Inner City Press asked in January 2018, here, before Guterres had it roughed up and banned; it asked again after the verdict on 5 December 2018, here). Guterres' wife, too, is linked to Gulbenkian, here. This is called corruption.

  Consider also Guterres' Cameroon and Central Africa envoy Francois Lounceny Fall. His last disclosure was signed in November 2017, and included three properties in Guinea, at at least one of which he was just a landlord, banking in Togo with shares in Ecobank Transnational Incorporated. Photo here. Where is the November 2018? Not filed or put online as of December 2018. A fish rots from the head. Inner City Press has repeatedly asked Guterres and his spokesmen Stephane Dujarric and Farhan Haq, "When will the public financial disclosures, in past years already online by this time, be made available?" For four days in a row, December 17 - 20, they did not answer a single written question from Inner City Press including about Cameroon and Togo, despite the promise to UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression David Kaye by Guterres' Global Communicator Alison Smale (who has no online financial disclosure and has yet to follow up on saying she would take under advisement the total ban on Press she is responsible for, video here). We have noted that Guterres' spouse Catarina Marques de Almeida Vaz Pinto has been Executive Coordinator of the Gulbenkian Programme for Creativity and Artistic Creation / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. There is still no answer to Inner City Press' detailed written questions about the business links in Africa and elsewhere of Guterres' son Pedro Guimarães e Melo De Oliveira Guterres. Guterres and these named individuals have taken the UN to a new low of corruption.

We will have more on this. Guterres refusal to initiate any audit, as even Ban Ki-moon did after the indictment of Ng Lap Seng for also bribing UN President of the General Assembly John Ashe, has allowed not only CEFC but another Ye Jianming NGO, known by names including the China Academy of Culture and the China Cultural Institute, to remain in the UN.

 Now in July 2019 it is reported that beyond his dealings with Guterres' UN and Guterres' Gulbenkian Foundation, Ye Jianming "gave" an expensive diamond to Hunter Biden.

   In a 22 August 2017 press release, soon before the arrest and indictment of CEFC's Patrick Ho, this entity bragged: "Recommended by the UN NGO Committee of 19 countries, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) conducted its final review in New York in July 2017 and officially approved the granting of the Chinese Cultural Council to the UN Economic and Social Council in August. status". This is the first non-governmental organization approved by the United Nations to promote the "special consultative status" of Chinese culture. It is a high priority for Chinese culture and an affirmation of the work of the Chinese Cultural Institute created by China Huaxin. This marks the establishment of a formal cooperative relationship between the two sides, providing a new stage for the Chinese Cultural Institute to further carry out international cooperation and exchanges and to tell the Chinese story.
Since its establishment, the Chinese Cultural Institute, under the leadership of Chairman Ye Jianming and under the leadership of all directors, has implemented the "One Body and Two Wings" work principle proposed by President Xu Jialu with the purpose of "promoting the culture of Chinese culture and harmonious world." This is the same Ye Jianming who used UN accredited CEFC to bribe PGA Sam Kutesa, and to offer weapons for oil and a stake in the Chad Cameroon pipeline to Idriss Deby. Guterres refusal to audit, and his and his spokesman's refusal to even answer questions, make clear how corrupt the UN has become and that both should go. On 1 December 2018, before seven UN bribery guilty verdicts against Patrick Ho of China Energy Fund Committee, Inner City Press reported that Jeffrey Sachs, a long time UN (part time) official, was on a CEFC-UN Advisory Board, and tweeted the photograph, here.  On December 15 Sachs denied it, saying it is absurd. Really?

Pressed, Sachs said "I attended an annual luncheon on two occasions (1 per year) hosted by the Chinese Gov for UN Ambassadors, which CEPC apparently catered.  I once went to a HK reception Mr. Ho was present.  That's it." Really? China Energy Fund Committee was more than a caterer. And this denial shows more clearly than ever why an audit of with whom CEFC has dealt with at and through the UN is necessary, and how irresponsible or worse Guterres is being. On December 17 Inner City Press in writing asked Guterres and his spokesman Stephane Dujarric, "December 17-7: On CEFC in the wake of the US v Ho verdicts, this is a request that the SG confirm and act on the other UN officials depicted as advisers to CEFC and its UN program - including Jeffrey Sachs, who has over the weekend online denied any such role, stating he may have attended a lunch “catered” by CEFC. Since this denial shows the absolute need for an audit at least like the previous SG did of Ng Lap Seng's groups, please state why the SG has not even begun such an audit."

Dujarric has not answered this or any other corruption related question from banned Inner City Press, nor those on Cameroon and other topics. And those he allowed in "his" briefing room did not ask. Inner City Press has published the CEFC document listing Sachs' role, here on Scribed, here for download on Patreon.

Need for UN Audit Shown By ... by on Scribd

Three years ago Macau based businessman Ng Lap Seng was arrested and charged with bribing UN General Assembly President Josh Ashe and others, though Sun Kian Ip Foundation and other groups still in the UN. Ng was convicted of multiple violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and money laundering. But the issue of faux NGO purchase of the UN hasn't gone away. In fact, a second UN bribery case ended this week in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York with seven guilty verdicts.

In this second case, Patrick Ho was found guilty of seven of eight counts of FCPA and month laundering. (He was only not guilty on money laundering in Chad - where the bribe was not through any US bank but in cash, $2 million in a gift box). The evidence showed that the NGO he ran, China Energy Fund Committee, used its ongoing UN consultative status to pay bribes to Ugandan foreign minister - and Ashe's successor as President of the UN General Assembly -- Sam Kutesa. He was working with precedessor Vuk Jeremic while Jeremic was UN PGA. CEFC even offered weapons, tanks and drones, to Chad's long time president Idriss Deby for oil blocks or a stake in the Chad Cameroon pipeline. (Inner City Press published documents here.)

The night of the verdict I asked UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres what he will do to clean up the UN, where he has left CEFC without any audit, still in consultative status with the UN. On his way from his Mercedes to a glitzy fundraiser including George and Amal Clooney, Guterres refused to answer. The next day when asked by another journalist why Guterres had refused to answer banned Inner City Press' question, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric claimed that the UN has “cooperated” with the prosecution. But the bribery group remains in the UN, unaudited.

Why has the case of US versus Ho, and now the guilty verdicts, garnered relatively so little interest, with the corruption of the UN exposed by it scarcely mentioned all? SG Guterres is hoping it goes away. In terms of corruption, he did not disclose and refuses to answer on the African business links of his son Pedro Guimarães e Melo De Oliveira Guterres...

***

Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com

UN Office, past & future?: S-303, UN, NY 10017 USA
For now UNder Guterres: UN Delegates Entrance Gate
and mail: Dag H. Center Box 20047, NY NY 10017 USA

Reporter's mobile (and weekends): 718-716-3540

Search innercitypress.com  Search WWW (censored?)

Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

 Copyright 2006-2019 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com for