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UN's Tokyo Scandal
Addressed Only to Japanese Media, Multiple Hats of UN Officials
Questioned
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at
the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, May 21 -- Faced with financial irregularities at its
Information Center in Tokyo, the head of the UN's Department of Public
Information, Kiyotaka Akasaka, called an impromptu press briefing on
less than three hours
notice.
The reporters who were informed of and invited to Mr. Akasaka's
briefing by the
UN Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit were only from Japanese media
outlets,
which share a communal office on the 4th floor of UN headquarters.
Upstairs
in his 10th floor office overlooking the East River, Mr. Akasaka
emphasized
that the Information Center, called a UNIC, had paid contractors in
advance based
on falsified invoices. One of the contractors went bankrupt, and its
successor
is now reportedly demanding a second payment. Akasaka spoke to the
reporters he
had invited, buttressed by two auditors from the UN's Office of
Internal
Oversight Services. The goal, according to several interviews conducted
in the
UN on May 21 by Inner City Press, appeared to be to rebutting as well
as containing the scandal, limiting it to
media in Japanese.
UN and Japan: non-Japanese media not shown
But
the UNIC in Tokyo represents the entire UN and its worldwide
contributors, as
does the Office of Internal Oversight Services. The investigation of
one by the
other is not only of Japanese interest. Could the Department of
Peacekeeping
Operations, for example, convene in New York a briefing about charges
of gold
and guns trading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, limiting
invitations
to Congolese journalists, or even those from Africa more broadly?
Such
confusions in the UN appear to be multiplying. Recently
Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon's special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, in Lagos promoting his
book, was quoted that Nigeria should contribute 50% of its oil
revenues to the
Delta. In New York, Inner City Press asked Ban's Spokesperson Michele
Montas in
what capacity Gambari had been speaking. In
his personal capacity, Ms. Montas said. "He is Nigerian."
But
how is the public to know, then, when a UN official is speaking for the
UN, and
when in his or her personal capacity. When Mr. Akasaka convened only
Japanese
media to speak about advance payments on falsified invoices at the UN
Information Center in Tokyo, was he speaking in his personal capacity?
Footnotes: some
have analogized the UNIC-Tokyo, Japanese media only press briefing to a
French-only briefing last year by Nicolas Sarkozy (click here for
Inner City Press' story on that). But while Mr. Akasaka is nowhere near
as combattive and openly exclusionary as President Sarkozy was -- quite
the opposite -- evenhanded invitations to the press are nevertheless
even more expected of a high UN official than the president of a
particular country.
Regarding
the Tokyo UNIC, a subtext to
Mr. Akasaka's briefing was growing unrest reported against the
director, Charmine
Koda. Like many in the UN's public information orbit, she formerly was
a
journalist. Why then try to sneak around the wider press corps?
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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