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

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive CJR  Video

UNITED NATIONS GATE, July 14 – How lawless and hypocritical is the United Nations of Secretary General Antonio Guterres? Beyond Guterres' promoting last month of a crony accused of sexual harassment, see below, his and NYC's silent on China discriminating against human rights and Inner City Press' reporting on UN "information technology" chicanery, consider this, now on outside activities allowed under corrupt Guterres of Gulbenkian:

"NYCHA in the United Nations  These are the stories of some former New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) staff who have transplanted into the United Nations and to what effect—an utterly dysfunctional and corrupt Office of Information and Communication Technology (OICT) in the United Nations Secretariat in New York.  Those staff have been brought into the Organization by the Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO), Atefeh Riazi, herself a former NYCHA staff.  Jeanette Ferguson:  Jeanette Ferguson is a very close friend and confidant of Riazi. They worked together for many years in NYCHA prior to both joining the United Nations.  Ferguson who arrived at the P-4 level performing some mundane functions is currently a P-5 carrying out the functions of three “posts” at one time: Chief of Enterprise Project Management office, Chief of Budget and Finance (without the required qualifications or experience), and Chief of Riazi’s Front Office.  She has also reportedly been the first reporting officer (her supporters say because Salem was under investigation, on which nothing has happened, which just goes to show) of Diane Dane, the $115 an hour Chief of the Partnership Unit and living girl friend of Salem Avan, Director in OICT who is the de facto personal messenger between Riazi and Avan, conveying personal and work related back and forth from one to the other. 

 Now this today on July 14 regard Salem Avan:

Salem Avan was a guest speaker a public paid attendee event "Social Innovation Summit," which was considered as an outside activity.   A sanitized portion remains on YouTube for now, here. But the key part was taken down two years ago, to cover up. Inner City Press has obtained it and exclusively published it on its YouTube channel, not yet raidable by Guterres, here:

  Avan in his introduction speaks of the UN Fifth Committee ("the committee brought to you by the letters G and A and the number 5" (thank you Sesame Street), "they abuse us and then decide whether or not we get money") and every UN staff member ("You're smart people, this is unusual for me to be in a room with smart people").  He violated his responsibilities as a staff member, specifically Staff Regulation .1.2 (f) and ST/AI/2000/12 Section 4.2 and his behavior demeaned the UN in getting outside people just to laugh at the UN and its staff - sometimes appropriately, but still.

The Regulation: "ST/AI/2000/12  4.2 Outside activities that are of benefit to the Organization or the achievement of its goals and/or contribute to the development of professional skills of staff members are usually not only permitted but encouraged, provided staff members exercise the utmost discretion with regard to all matters of official business and avoid any public statement that may adversely reflect on their status, or on the integrity, independence and impartiality that are required by that status.  Staff Regulation 1.2 (f)  (f)            While staff members’ personal views and convictions, including their political and religious convictions, remain inviolable, staff members shall ensure that those views and convictions do not adversely affect their official duties or the interests of the United Nations. They shall conduct themselves at all times in a manner befitting their status as international civil servants and shall not engage in any activity that is incompatible with the proper discharge of their duties with the United Nations. They shall avoid any action and, in particular, any kind of public pronouncement that may adversely reflect on their status, or on the integrity, independence and impartiality that are required by that status."

 Nothing was done despite being reported.     Avan got promoted to D-2 by Atefeh Riazi --

 the UN of Guterres is totally corrupt.

Sources have told ICP that both Riazi and Avan are currently under investigation for financial irregularities investigation [...] and that Avan is under sexual harassment investigation by OIOS.  Ferguson herself is reportedly also the subject of a sexual harassment complaint by an OICT staff.  Jonathan Fisher:  Jonathan Fisher is another NYCHA transplant who was hired by Riazi immediately after he was fired from NYCHA.  He has served as a consultant at $67.00 per hour for 20 hours per week to rewrite memos and correspondence drafted by United Nations staff, because, according to Riazi,"their written English is so poor”.  Sources have stated that Fisher is a close friend and business partner of George Carrano, Riazi’s husband, and that Carrano and Fisher have collaborated while in NYCHA on producing an unauthorized book which used NYCHA official material, which has led to Fisher’s firing.  Gianluca Gallori:  Gianluca Gallori is the husband of Allison Bailey, a top manager and senior partner in Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and close friend of Riazi.  Sources have told ICP that when Riazi took up her job with the United Nations, Gallori was unemployed after his company had gone bankrupt and he offered to work for free for a couple of months to assess the United Nations’ internal processes.  Subsequently Gallori was given a consultant contract followed by a temporary appointment and joined the Unite Service Desk, working from home two days per week.  He is currently designated as Chief of the Unite Service Desk at the P-5 level on a UNOP contract (and still working from home two days per week)... Colleagues of Gallori say he is not qualified to run the Desk which has seen its share of problems following the departure of its former chief in September 2016, but that never prevented Gallori from untruthfully and shamelessly embellishing his credentials on the Web.    Riazi and Bailey had led their sides within the Steering Committee set to manage the joint project aimed to assess and propose improvement to NYCHA’s central support service functions.  The Steering Committee reported to the NYCHA Board headed by John Rhea (formerly employed by the BCG) before Riazi’s departure following the uproar over, and federal investigation into, a $10 million secret consultant report by the BCG for the NYCHA.  The contract for the secret report was apparently awarded without following proper NYCHA procurement procedures.  The US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had demanded billing invoices for the BCG report.     Rebecca Ralston:  On 13 October 2016 Inner City Press reported on Rebecca Ralston , another NYCHA acquaintance of Riazi:  Rebecca Ralston, a friend of the UN's (American) Chief Information Technology Officer Atefeh (Atti) Riazi, from the New York City Housing Authority, was hired as a consultant in OICT and paid $110.00 per hour for 40 hours per week for the last 2 years or so, until she was let go...  Ralston was one of many close NYCHA acquaintances Riazi brought into OICT and paid generously. Ralston was hired ostensibly to do an inventory of web sites as part of the implementation of the UN ICT strategy but did, by all accounts, a decidedly unremarkable job. Ralston who is also the CEO of Agile Impact Group, an online brand management company based in Seattle that offers digital brand management services for monitoring, analyzing, and managing clients’ digital presence, was actually (real job) using her company services, pushing content onto the Web, to influence (diminish) negative press on Ban Ki-moon and improve his "brand.   As of October 12, Ralston is not in the UN database."   As it turns out, Ralston is an old hand in this sort of thing, having done the same before in NYCHA. Ralston, who was back then known as Rebecca Bilbao and had served as the CEO of Search Impact Consulting, was given a $100,000.00 contract by NYCHA to clean up its online image.  Mike Moran:  Inner City Press has previously reported extensively on Mike Moran:  “Mike Moran, who the CITO brought in on a temporary contract in 2014 at the P-5 level, was subsequently "regularized" through a doctored recruitment exercise and appointed to a fixed term contract in 2015.  Then in 2016 there was an attempt to get him installed at the D-2 level, (skipping the D-1 level) when Job Opening (JO) 54326 was initially advertised on January 28 through to March 28 2016. . . Mike Moran was a P-5.  He applied for the D-2 position.  Because staff on regular appointments are not eligible to apply for positions more than one level above their appointed grade, his application was screened out. When he and Riazi discovered that he was not eligible for the position the day after the JO closed (after seeing the released applicants) on March 29, Moran resigned his P-5 position with an effective date of 6 April.  On 31 March 2016, Ms Riazi imposed upon OHRM to extend the JO by an extra month until April 29.  . . Moran left the UN on April 6.  His out of office said he was "out of the office until 31/8/2016," which indicates the intent for him to return to the UN. Mr Moran was allowed to apply again (irregularly) as an external applicant and was interviewed for the D-2 position in the week of 23 May.”

   In a musical chairs personnel move on April 18, the day after he continued his 287 day censorship of the Press, Guterres named as his new Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Coordination one Volker Türk, who when Inner City Press asked him about refugees chased by Paul Biya's Cameroon army into Nigeria seemed not to know about it. Guterres, as we have reported, not only took a golden statue from Biya, but went silent on the killings since Cameroon was chair of the UN Budget Committee. But it's worse: Turk is taking the position from Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond of Chile "who was appointed as Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Preparations for the Commemoration of the United Nations’ 75th Anniversary." This promotion is, ghoulishly, Guterres rewarding what multiple staff say was Hochschild's relationship with another junior staff member. Talk about MeToo - the faux feminist Guterres covers up and rewards such behavior. We'll have more on this - while Guterres and his spokespeople refuse to answer any of Inner City Press' written questions, we still have sources, many sources. Watch this site.

***

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