UN
Guterres Promotes Murky Office
of South South Cooperation in
India With Macri Boondoggle Next
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS,
October 2 – With UN Secretary
General Antonio Guterres now
in India, which he has praised
for its support to 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, Guterres'
spokesman Stephane Dujarric
has taken to blocking
Inner City Press which reports
on UN and Guterres'
use of funds on Twitter.
Here now an exclusive interim
report on UN OSSC, even as
Guterres banned
Inner City Press from its
press conference and the UN as
a whole for 91 days and
counting:
As recession
looms in Argentina, its
Central Bank raising its
interest rates substantially
in the past month and after
the country announced it was
turning to the IMF
for a bailout, the government
is set to spend millions of
borrowed dollars on a wasteful
UN conference on South-South
Cooperation slated for March
2019 in Buenos Aires, to spend
millions on an Office led by
director Jorge
Chediek whos aim OSSC
sources say is to use this
conference to advance to UN
Assistant Secretary General
level. His tenure at the
Office thus far has involved a
spate of self promotional
travel while signing off on
dubious Memoranda of
Understanding (MOUs) for
projects that are only
tangentially related to actual
South-South development.
The MoU signings are often
documented on the Facebook
pageof Mr. Chediek, where he
brags about the support from
Guterres, who has refused to
audit the next UN corruption
scandal involving Patrick Ho
the China Energy Fund
Committee and had Inner City
Press which reports on it
roughed up and banned from the
UN.
Its collaboration
with Yingke Group, started
initially when current UNOSSC
Deputy Direcor Grace Wang, a
Chinese national, worked at
BPPS. When she commenced her
role at UNOSSC, this
relationship traveled with
her. This Yingke Group -UNOSSC
collaboration is covered in a
30 May 2018 article entitled
UNOSSC delegation discusses
South-South collaboration with
Yingke Group where it claims
this collaboration "is
designed to be one pillar of
the South-South Cooperation
Poverty Eradication
Facility,aiming to utilize
tourism as an instrument for
poverty alleviation through
improving infrastructure,
generating local employment,
increasing local income, and
developing local capacities."
But what is behind these
buzzwords?
The large number
of Mo Us also attest to the
frequency of wasteful travelby
Mr. Chediek. While million of
Argentinians are subjected to
austerity, the Government of
President Macri has decided to
invest millions in the
ambitions of one man, Mr.
Chediek. In addition to the
Chinese nepotism, Mr. Chediek
seems to have his own
questionable connections.
Recently, OSSC sources
complain, he hired an
Argentinian national for a
senior peace-building post and
one whose brother is the
founder and executive director
of Brandling Latin America, a
London based PR firm with
royal connections through the
company's senior director Lady
Gabriella Windsor?
The Office
continues to operate in highly
questionable ways, giving rise
to these questions: 'This
Office of South South
Cooperation is nested under
UNDP, and provided with $25
million in core money from the
UNDP budget. This budget is
currently protected from any
change in UNDP's financial
situation. It should be noted
that the budgets of the other
UNDP-funded organizations, UN
Volunteers and UNCDF - which
had their strategic frameworks
approved by this Board, and
whose monitoring and
evaluation frameworks are
clear - are not protected.
So... I) When will the
Office's budget, monitoring
and evaluation and results be
reported to the [UNDP
Executive] Board, and will
this be for decision? 2) Will
the Office start producing an
annual report again, and when
will this be available to the
Board? 3) How is the Office
working with UNDP's evaluation
and audit offices? 4) Where
will the Office's results be
reported and collated? 5) How
does the Office comply with
UNDP's transparency
requirements? We also note the
Office's fundraising
activities, and the very
generous investments totaling
$150 million this year by the
Government of India.
We'll have more on Guterres
and this Office, in India and
beyond. Amid record
unemployment rates and long
soup kitchen queues is BAPA+40
really a priority item for the
Government of Argentina?
What is happening to the UN
under Guterres, and his
spokesman Dujarric who blocks
and bans the Press? Watch this
site.
***
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