As
Cuts Loom, UN Pension Fund Wines
& Dines Brokers in
Hospitality Log, Probe Needed
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive Series
UNITED NATIONS,
January 26 – As the UN remains
unreformed after Ban Ki-moon's
ten years ended with
corruption, long asked about
by the Press, exposed, budget
cuts are coming. And scrutiny
on UN corruption is being
ramped up.
Inner City
Press continues its series
today with this from the UN
Joint Staff Pension Fund, which
whistleblowing staff tell
Inner City Press maintains a
"Hospitality Log" of its
wining and dining of brokers,
leaving General Service staff
to (mis) fill in the information.
The
whistleblowers tell Inner City
Press of a directive from Sandhya
Peerthum,
citing Ban
Ki-moon's
corrupt
boondoggle
UMOJA:
"With the
implementation
of UMOJA,
assistance
from EO has
been
drastically
reduced.
Assistants can
help schedule
interviews,
print PHP,
book rooms,
take notes,
enter guests
in workspeed
for access
etc. They can
better support
the SIO’s by
taking on more
administrative
roles to free
up the SIO’s
time so that
they can focus
on their
respective
portfolios.
Also, trading
has been
absorbed by
Vicky so there
is a lot of
excess
capacity."
The staff
whistleblowers
tell Inner
City Press
there is a problem
with "accurate
record keeping including the
Hospitality Log – Hospitality
log is the responsibility of
the P-staff (Investment
Officers) who wine and dine
with brokers, advisers and
other investment
professionals. So how would a
GS staff know when and where a
P-staff would be enjoying
lunch, dinner and beer (and
what else) on any given date
or time to update the
hospitality log? This is
totally illegal"
and needs
investigation. For now, the
UN's holdover Spokesman has
answered only two and a half
of Inner City Press' 22
questions, and on January 25
left the briefing room as
Inner City Press was still
asking questions. We'll have
more on this.
In
Washington executive orders
are being prepared to cut up
to 40% of the US'
contributions to the UN, and
to fully cut funding to
entities blamed for violation
of human rights.
One
obvious question is whether
the total denial of due
process for whistleblowers -
already part of US law - and
investigative press which covers
UN corruption
constitutes such a violation.
For
example, the UN Department of
Public Information under
Cristina Gallach in early 2016
threw
Inner City Press out of the
UN, dumping its
investigative files onto First
Avenue, without a single
hearing or opportunity to be
heard, and no
appeal since.
All this for
seeking to cover an event in
the UN Press Briefing Room
which was nowhere listed as
closed, and leaving as soon as
a single UN Security officer
said the Spokesman, Stephane
Dujarric, wanted Inner City
Press out.
Gallach had a
conflict of interest, having
been asked
by Inner City Press about her
own links with
Macau-based businessman Ng Lap
Seng, facing trial (like Ban
Ki-moon's nephew and brother)
on bribery charges.
There are no
rules, only the one-person
fiat rule of an official
dumped on Ban's UN by Spain,
where she had previously
managed, at most, seven people
as spokesperson to Javier
Solana. Nothing has been done;
eleven months later Gallach
still requires Inner City
Press to have "minders"
to cover the UN Security
Council.
The cuts,
and a new US Ambassador, are
coming. Six days after a
confirmation hearing in which
she called for accountability
at the UN, including for
peacekeepers' abuses, Nikki
Haley on January 24 was
confirmed to replace Samantha
Power as US Ambassador to the
UN.
This came
after at least two business
days of no
photos replacing those
of President Barack Obama and
Vice President Joe Biden at
the US Mission to the UN.
On January
24, Inner City Press asked
former UN official, now
Swedish foreign minister
Margot Wallstrom about Haley's
call to defund countries whose
peacekeepers abuse. Tweeted
video here. There are
reforms needed at the UN.
Back on
January 18 before Haley spoke
as nominee for US Ambassador
to the UN, Senator Bob Corker
said he sometimes wondered if
just-left Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon had a pulse.
In fact,
Ban was quite active in
helping his own relatives at
the UN, promoting his son in
law to the top UN job in
Kenya, his brother mining in
Myanmar with a "UN
delegation," indicted nephew
using Ban's name to sell real
estate.
When Haley
began, she said the UN has a
"checkered history." That's
being diplomatic. Consider a
head of Peacekeeping who has
linked rapes to R&R, video
here.
Consider a
head of the UN "Department of
Public Information" who did no
due diligence over indicted UN
briber Ng Lap Seng - then
evicted and still restricts
the Press which asked here
about it. Audit
here, Para 37-40, 20b; NYT
here.
In
response to questions, Haley
praised the UN peacekeeping
mission in Sierra Leone,
questioned the one in South
Sudan and that country's
government. She noted that
countries make money off their
peacekeepers. The case in
point, we note, is Burundi, here.
***
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