UN
Budget
Committee
Fights on Gaza
and R2P Amid
Delay By
Absent
Guterres
Excluding
Press
By Matthew
Russell Lee, CJR PFT CEFC
Video
UNITED NATIONS,
December 22 – When the UN
Budget Committee met on
Saturday night in a UN that SG
Antonio Guterres has banned
Inner City Press from for its
coverage of the Committee and
of Guterres' conflicts of
interest, there were fights on
Responsibility to Protect,
Gaza and kicking Human
Resources Management down the
road. Tweeted thread here.
Cuba made
its annual amendment to say
Responsibility to Protect was
never approved by the UN.
Austria for the EU responded
it was approved in UNSC
Resolution 1366 in 2001.
Cuba's amendment had 24 yes
votes, 68 no, and 48
abstentions including India.
Israel put
forward an amendment to not
fund an inquiry into Gaza. It
got, voting with it, the US,
Liberia, and Australia the
country of the Committee's
chair Gillian Elizabeth Bird.
Twelve abstained.
Human Resources
Management failed, with Egypt
for the Group of 77 blaming it
on Guterres' Secretariat
giving documents too late.
Guterres was long gone,
refusing to answer to where or
how much he is spending.
(Inner City Press ran a scoop
seeming to require responses
by OIOS, even impeachment,
here.)
Egypt mourned
again this failure at the end
of the Fifth at 8 pm, and
wished well incoming G77 chair
Palestine. Bring it on - but
hold Guterres and his regime
of censorship for corruption
to account. While UN Secretary
General Antonio Guterres was refusing throughout 2018 to
begin any UN audit into China
Energy Fund Committee,
implicated in the UN bribery
prosecution US v Patrick Ho,
Guterres had a secret.
Guterres was and it seems
still is connected with and
compensated by a company which
was trying to sell its oil and
gas business to China Energy
Fund Committee in 2018.
Guterres' failure to disclose
and refusal to audit was a
direct conflict of interest,
which he has tried to cover up
by roughing up and banning
Inner City Press which asked
him about it. (See January
2018 press conference here,
July 2018 roughing up by
Guterres' UN Security here,
banning letter via Press
Freedom Tracker here.)
For
years Guterres received money
as a board member of the
Calouste Galbenkian
Foundation, which despite its
name is the 100% owner of
Partex Oil and Gas. Partex
has operations in Angola, Abu
Dhabi, Brazil, Kazakhstan, the
Netherlands, Oman and
Portugal. It was to a
Portuguese court that
Guterres, while justifying
no listing some of his income,
disclosed in 2016 that he was
paid at least € 2735 per month
for his position with the
Gulbenkian Foundation.
But
while a now deleted Foundation
web page (archived here)
stated that Guterres continued
with Gulbenkian into 2018,
Guterres did not list it on
his most
recent, and so far lone,
UN Public Financial
Disclosure, which covered 2016
("Disclosing financial and
other interests for the 2016
reporting year").
So why did
Guterres disclose his position
with the Club of Madrid, but not
with the Gulbenkian Foundation
/ Partex Oil and Gas? It is
worth noting that Guterres'
wife Catarina Vaz Pinto has
also been connected
to Gulbenkian.
Following the roughing up and
banning from the UN of Inner
City Press which has covered
the CEFC scandal throughout,
Guterres' head of Global
Communications Alison Smale promised
UN Special Rapporteur for
Freedom of Expression David
Kaye, who asked,
that the UN would still answer
Inner City Press' written
questions.
But
as 2018 came to a close
Guterres' spokesmen Stephane
Dujarric and Farhan Haq left
unanswered 36 questions in a
row from Inner City Press,
including this: “Beyond the 35
questions from Inner City
Press you refused to answer
this week, this is a request
on deadline that you (1) state
when SG Guterres left his
position on the Gulbenkian
Foundation,
(2) state why
Gulbenkian was not listed on
SG Guterres' public financial
disclosure which covered 2016;
(3) explain how
it is not a conflict of
interest for SG Guterres to
have refused to start an audit
of CEFC in the UN, as
requested by Inner City Press
in January 2018, given CEFC's
bid for the oil business of
Gulbenkian.
Also, again,
state why under SG Guterres
there have been no updates to
the UN public financial
disclosures since those filed
for 2016. Also, again, explain
your refusal to answer any of
Inner City Press' questions
this week despite USG Smale's
statements to GAP, me and UNSR
David Kaye. On deadline.”
The
question was also sent to the
e-mail addresses of Guterres,
his chief of staff Maria Luiza
Ribeiro Viotti, his Deputy
Amina J. Mohammed, and Smale,
who earlier in the week told
Inner City Press she would
take “under advisement” her 17
August 2018 pretextual
withdrawal of Inner City Press
decade long UN media
accreditation.
It seems clear that
Guterres and his team have
engaged in censorship for
corruption, to conceal a
blatant conflict of interest
by Guterres. It has been
raised by Inner City Press to
the UN Office of Internal
Oversight Services, and
others. Watch this site.
Back on 5
December 2018 Patrick Ho was
found guilty of seven of eight
counts of violating the US
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
and month laundering. (He was
only not guilty on money
laundering in Chad - where the
bribe was not through any US
bank but in cash, $2 million
in a gift box). The evidence
showed that the NGO he ran,
China Energy Fund Committee,
used its ongoing UN
consultative status to pay
bribes to Ugandan foreign
minister - and Ashe's
successor as President of the
UN General Assembly -- Sam
Kutesa.. He was working
with precedessor Vuk
Jeremic while Jeremic
was UN PGA. CEFC even offered
weapons, tanks and drones, to
Chad's long time president
Idriss Deby for oil blocks or
a stake in the Chad Cameroon
pipeline. (Inner City Press
published documents here.)
The night of the
verdict I asked UN Secretary
General Antonio Guterres what
he will do to clean up the UN,
where he has left CEFC without
any audit, still in
consultative status with the
UN. On his way from his
Mercedes to a glitzy
fundraiser including George
and Amal Clooney, Guterres refused to
answer. The next day when
asked by another journalist
why Guterres had refused to
answer banned Inner City
Press' question, his spokesman
Stephane Dujarric claimed that
the UN has “cooperated” with
the prosecution. But the
bribery group remains in the
UN, unaudited.
Why has the case
of US versus Ho, and now the
guilty verdicts, garnered
relatively so little interest,
with the corruption of the UN
exposed by it scarcely
mentioned all? SG Guterres is
hoping it goes away. In terms
of corruption, he did not
disclose and refuses to answer
on the African business links
of his son Pedro Guimarães e
Melo De Oliveira Guterres. He
refuses to answer how much he
spends in public funds flying
to his home in Lisbon
at least sixteen times sofar
as SG.
So
CEFC remains an accredited non
governmental organization with
the UN's Economic and Social
Council, while investigative
Inner City Press for which I
have been covering the case
has been dis-accredited by and
ousted from the UN, put on a
list of those permanently
banned without notice, due
process or appeal. On December
7 I was
informed I am banned
from a “UN Human Rights” event
on December 10 to be addressed
by Guterres and his human
rights commissioner Michelle
Bachelet. But this reporting
will not stop - Guterres'
corruption of the UN must be
addressed, through oversight
or as is discussed elsewhere,
impeachment. From the lofty
goals of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights to
Guterres' censorship for
corruption is UNacceptable.
With UN High
Commissioner
for Human
Rights
Michelle
Bachelet
and her Deputy Andrew Gilmour
set to speak in the UN on
human rights day on December
10, Inner City Press responded
to an invitation and was told,
"Thank you for registering to
attend the Human Rights Day
event at the United Nations on
Monday 10 December. On Monday,
please come to the UN
Visitors’ Gate on First Avenue
opposite 45th street starting
at 2pm, at which time entry
passes will be distributed."
Then, past six
p.m. on Friday, December 7 this
from Bachelet's and Gilmour's
Office of the High
Commissioner
for Human
Rights: "Dear
Matthew, We
have received
notification
from UN
Security that
your name was
flagged as
"BARRED" on
the list we
submitted for
passes for
Monday's event
(3pm, ECOSOC
Chamber). We
will therefore
not have a
pass for you
and are unable
to facilitate
entry.
Thank you for
your interest
and best
regards,
OHCHR New York
Office." Photo
of email here.
Inner City Press
immediately wrote back,
to the sender
and
Bachelet and
her assistant, to
Andrew Gilmour
and to the
moderator of
the event, "Particularly
since you are the UN Office of the
High Commissioner for *Human
Rights,* did you not ask why a
journalist who asks the Secretary
General and his spokesmen about
the killings in Cameroon,
Burundi, UN
corruption, UN peacekeepers'
sexual abuse of civilians,
and Sri
Lanka, is “BARRED” from
attending your human rights event
- without any hearing or appeal? I
will appreciate your Office's
answer to this." We'll
have more on this.
Bachelet
gave a speech on
October 15 in the UN's Third
Committee, she emphasized a
prioritization of social and
economic rights and said one
of the officials of her office
is "on mission in
Silicon Valley" in the
US. There are questions
about this - but Inner City
Press which has covered human
rights and the UN for more
than a decade was for the
first time banned from access
a High Commissioner's speech.
This has been raised repeated
to Bachelet since she took
office but she has so far done
nothing, not even responded.
Meanwhile on October 12
Cameroon, from whose Paul Biya
Secretary General Antonio
Guterres took a golden statue
and favors in the Fifth
(Budget) Committee and remains
silent on the slaughter of
Anglophones, was elected to a
seat on the UN Human Rights
Council. This system is
failing - but if Bachelet
cannot even answer on Guterres
maintaining a secret banned
list including not only Inner
City Press but also "political
activists" - and anti-corruption
campaigners -
then the UN of Guterres has
hit its
newest low.
***
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