Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive follow-up

UNITED NATIONS, October 7 -- Some in the UN purport to be surprised by the indictment of 2013-14 President of the General Assembly John Ashe on charges of soliciting bribes from Macao businessmen including the Sun Kian Ip Group's Ng Lap Seng. But what is surprising is that it took this long for the laxness not only of Ashe but of the President of the General Assembly office's structure and UN's easy penetration by business interests to lead to this. This includes dozens of Ambassadors flown to Macau in August 2015.

   Inner City Press on October 6 asked UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric about Sun Kian Ip and why the UN had sent out a press released by South-South ("NGO 1" in the indictment) as it were a UN entity. Transcript here, video here.

  Inner City Press' continued digging finds that Sun Kian Ip Group and Ng Lap Seng in March 2015 promised $5 million a year for three years to the UN: “Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations and President of the High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation Dr. A. K. Abdul Momen, UN Secretary General’s Envoy and Director of the UN Office for South-South Cooperation Mr. Yiping Zhou and Chairman of the Sun Kian Ip Group Mr. Ng Lap Seng signed the agreement.” See here.

  The question to be pursued is obvious: what was THAT money for? Or this, described on a UN / UNDP website of August 25, 2015:

"Macau, SAR, China: 25 August – A High-level Multi-stakeholders Strategy Forum on South-South cooperation for sustainable development got off to a strong start Tuesday, with more than 200 delegates, from 50+ countries. The two-day Forum began with a opening ceremony featuring distinguished and powerful champions of South-South cooperation... This Strategy Forum is a timely opportunity to 'review, consolidate, and enhance existing instruments and institutional arrangements,' said Ambassador Denis Antoine of Grenada, on behalf of Sam Kutesa of Uganda, President of the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly."

 Inner City Press is informed that dozens of ambassadors also went to this Macau junket, where the casino owner lobbied that all future meetings of South-South Cooperation be held there. We'll have more on this.

Sources exclusively tell Inner City Press that John Ashe, whom Inner City Press saw about the UN during General Debate week, was offered an Assistant Secretary General post, for Partnerships, and that a previously scheduled Ban trip to Shanghai will now not happen. “They're hoping it blows over,” one well placed source told Inner City Press. But will it?

   At the October 6 noon briefing, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric expressed faux surprise at the number of journalists in the room. He gave the first question to Reuters, which asked a generic softball question; he said new President of the General Assembly Mogens Lykketoft will answer at 3 pm (Ban is going out of town, to Peru).

  Inner City Press asked Dujarric to confirm or deny that Ashe gave Ban Ki-moon a document about a proposed UN Macau Conference Center. Dujarric said the UN couldn't find it. Long Periscope video here with these questions near the end.

   So Inner City Press asked about another document - a press release by the “South South Awards,” which UN DPI next to Dujarric office sent to UN journalists last week. Isn't that a “non-UN” group? What is its relation with the UN?

  After Dujarric emphasized the PGA's office does not report to Ban, Inner City Press asked if Ban after seven years sees a need to more transparency, as one example, who pays the people in the PGA's office? We'll have more on this.

Photo: Indictees Ashe & Lorenzo, & Amb Monem who says farewell to #BanKiMoon today, story in 1 minute pic.twitter.com/4xQUjGYrgh

— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) October 7, 2015
Photo credit (!) UNDP

   During Ashe's tenure, Inner City Press covered his various failures; the example of an indigenous conference is below. But it's been similar with other PGAs, who travel around the world with little press coverage or accountability, often cutting deals.

  It's not even a full time job: as Inner City Press first reported and got confirmed, in 2014-15 Sam Kutesa remained Uganda's foreign minister, while PGA. (Kutesa tried to place his chief of staff as head of Africa 1 in the UN Department of Political Affairs, here.)

  More recently, Inner City Press has reported that current PGA Mogens Lykketoft's office has been used to lobby for the candidacy of fellow Dane Helle Thorning-Schmidt to take over the UN's refugee agency UNHCR, despite her own record as Danish PM being criticized by UNHCR.

   There are a number of business groups which use the UN -- one of them was even allowed to sponsor the annual event of Herve Ladsous' UN Peacekeeping -- and get awards, like just last week in an ITU event inside the UN. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is aware, or should be aware, of all of this, but won't even disclose who pays for his trips (Inner City Press and the new Free UN Coalition for Access have asked).

  Apparently Ashe excused his wheeling and dealing by referring to “South South Cooperation.” While a laudable concept, Inner City Press was struck last week when Ban Ki-moon's UN Spokesperson's office sent out to journalists the news of a non-UN “South South” group at which Ashe had previously appeared. It's a murky world.

Update: an African diplomat, by the UN Security Council after publication of the above, told Inner City Press Ashe taking bribes to pitch a UN Conference Center was "not suprrising." Another said, "They're ruining the UN's name." Ruining?

  So is UN corruption a surprise? Hardly. Ashe's indictment, however, and where it leads, bear watching.

Ashe Background: On May 23, 2014, hours after the end of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the buzz at the UN was why and by whose decision the finale of the Forum was taken over by the Crimean Tatar issue.

   Many participants sympathetic to the Tatars' plight nevertheless opined that it was a misuse of the Permanent Forum. They said they had not been consulted and asked, Who decided? The chair.

  Some Forum members said it was good to "get revenge on Russia" for question the modalities of the scheduled World Conference. But several of these said it was still a hijacking of a long-standing issues, the plight of the indigenous, by the "flavor of the month."

  "It's not like the Tatars don't have other defenders," one UNPFII veteran said. For example, there was a UN Security Council Arria formula meeting about the Tatars held, sponsored by Security Council member Lithuania (click here for more recent on that mission).

  Another added, "India just wanted more time, and Bangladesh was angry because of a half-hour screed against them by an advocate whose relative is an insider."

   "We shouldn't have let the Forum get politicized," said another. But it was done.

  When a constituency lets their issues be taken over in the heat of the moment, it might seem strategic - and might turn out not to be. The issue of injustice to the indigenous is too serious to be a play-thing for the flavor of the month, the Free UN Coalition for Access opines.

  Nearly unanimous, however, was criticism of UN President of the General Assembly John Ashe.

Background: The failure of UN President of the General Assembly John Ashe to “show leadership” in setting up the World Conference on Indigenous People scheduled for September was strongly criticized on May 23.

For more than a week, Inner City Press has been asking indigenous leaders what they expected from PGA Ashe. Only that he implement the “modalities” already agreed to for the Conference, was the answer. One speaker, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, noted that Ashe's office had tried to blame a member state for blocking things but this wasn't true.

  But at 4 pm on May 23 in the General Assembly, when a statement was read out for Ashe, it said that “no consensus” had been reached, even on Monday's watered-down proposal, and that Ashe would be calling for another meeting next week.

 There followed speeches of disappointment, not only from indigenous representatives but also countries: beginning with Mexico and Norway, through Denmark and Guatemala's Permanent Representative Rosenthal, heavily indigenous Bolivia, Finland, Australia and New Zealand.

 Nicaragua's deputy Permanent Representative spoke, then Sweden. Kenneth Deer called for full and equal participation. Panama spoke, and a representative of the United States, with obstructed view.

Earlier in the week Inner City Press asked Grand Chief Edward John from Western Canada about the proposed oil sands and tar sands pipelines there. He said the Harper government is expected to gives its approval. Then what?

Footnote: at these indigenous press conferences, the new Free UN Coalition for Access thanked the speakers; the old UN Correspondents Association was generally not there, except an appearance that triggers a response that Morocco is not in the African Union and therefore didn't participate in its programs. UNCA big wigs were trying a scam elsewhere, it emerged. Typical.