After
UNSC Website Given To DPA Chief
of Staff's Husband Press Banned
for $1M Dutch Scam
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive
follow up
UNITED NATIONS,
July 26 – At the UN, even the
Security Council's website is
a prize to quietly be given to
a top official's spouse, with
no competition or
transparency. In May prior to
being banned from the UN in
July by Secretary General
Antonio Guterres, Inner City
Press was exclusively informed
by whistleblowers that
Department of Political
Affairs chief of staff Kyoko
Shiotani's husband John van
Rosendaal has been brought in
to run the Council's website,
as if the UN and its Security
Council were a small business
suffused in nepotism. After
its reporting, Inner City
Press was approached by a
senior UN person and told to
drop the story, or else. Then,
in the middle of a speech by
Guterres on June 22, Inner
City Press was pushed
out of the UN by UN Lieutenant
Ronald E. Dobbins and four UN
Emergency Response Unit
officers who, equipped with
automatic weapons, refused to
give their names. On July 3,
after a written alert
by Inner City Press to
Guterres and his team
including about
"irregularities in even how
the UNSC's website is run," a
more violent ouster
and 23 day ban
since. In the interim, more
information from sources about
the UN website corruption:
"Further to your article,
let me inform you that van
Rosendaal was hired at a P5
level (something that takes a
lifetime for career UN staff
to accomplish). And that he
won't be even making the web
site, that will be done by
another department, he will
just show up to meetings from
time to time. He has
absolutely no expertise in
design or development of web
sites and will not make any
contribution to the actual web
site. His contract was again
extended, and will probably
get another extension after
the new year. Similar sites
done by DPI in the past were
done with internal resources,
no extra cost and usually by
lower P level staff or G level
staff. In addition to this he
is asking for additional money
to hire external contractors
that are suppose to do some of
the actual work." Inner City
Press, from the bus stop in
front of the UN Delegates
Entrance where is it working
since banned by Guterres,
asked a follow up question, as
it cannot due to UN
Spokespeople given Guterres
ban: "what has USG Rosemary
DiCarlo (or anyone else) done
about this, since it was
exposed?" The reply: "Nothing
much was changed. I believe
only you reported it and they
don't consider that as much
negative exposure. So pretty
much business as usual. This
project is financially
supported by the Dutch
government and John is Dutch
so... The total cost with his
P5, the other offices involved
and external contractors that
John is hiring could reach
probably close to half million
dollars" or, we're told,
double that. So it was simple
for Guterres' (and it seems
DiCarlo's) UN: do nothing
about the blatant corruption,
just rough up and ban the
Press which alone reported on
it. We'll have more on this.
Back on May 24, before it was
banned from the UN noon
briefing by Guterres,
Inner City Press asked his
spokesman Stephane Dujarric
about it. From the UN transcript:
Inner City Press: people that
work in your UN Department of
Political Affairs (DPA) have
been confused and surprised to
see, according to them, that
the husband of the Chief of
Staff, Kyoko Shiotani, a John
van Rosendaal, has been
designated to run the Security
Council's website. They…
they found it kind of strange
because there was… there was
no need for it. He was
brought in without any
competition, according to
them, and it seemed like a
classic case of nepotism and
affecting the Security Council
itself. So, I'm
wondering… maybe you don't
have the information at your
fingertips, but can you find
out how it is that… that it's…
I've seen this thing.
He's now called a senior
programme officer after being
a self-employed consultant.
Spokesman: I'm not aware
of the case, and I'm sure all
the rules were followed.
Carole?
Inner City Press: How
are you so sure?" This was not
answered. On LinkedIn, van
Rosendaal lists
himself as “Strategic
Communications Consultant at
United Nations” as well as
Self-Employed, Photographic
Wanderings.
Here
is van Rosendaal's website,
Photographic Wanderings dot
com: “Professionally, I’ve
worked as a journalist, media
company manager and
communications consultant. I
plan to combine my passion and
my expertise to build this
site into something
interesting, useful and
entertaining. I’m originally
Dutch but left Holland in
1989. Since then I’ve mostly
lived in or close to New York,
with stints in Switzerland,
Cyprus and Austria.”
He's a
communications strategist with
39 Twitter followers. Now he's
to run the Security Council's
website. Why not?
Inner City
Press asks, how did this "self
employed communications
consultant" (with 39 Twitter
followers) become, as his
signature block now says,
"Senior Program Officer,
Security Council Affairs
Division"?
This is
the UN of Antonio Guterres.
Rosemary DiCarlo has just
taken over at DPA. Guterres
and his spokesman Stephane
Dujarric banned Inner City
Press from covering the
ceremony where Dicarlo
presumably pledged to serve
the public. It is impossible
to know since UNTV did not
film it and Inner City Press
was then and now banned from
its own livestream Periscope
broadcast on Guterres' 38th
floor.
Now what will
DiCarlo, or perhaps despite
his spokesman's knee-jerk
defenses of and evictions for
anything the UN does Guterres
who is already charged with
overseeing cover ups of sexual
harassment in the IAEA, do?
Watch this site.
***
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