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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT CEFC Video

UNITED NATIONS GATE, April 17 – How corrupt and lawless is the United Nations of Secretary General Antonio Guterres? His head of Security Peter Drennan did not in his tenure even respond to detailed complaints about his Lieutenant Ronald E. Dobbins roughing up the Press while it covered Guterres' deals in the UN Budget Committee. Then Drennan directed his officers to try to get NYPD to restrain Inner City Press on the sidewalks of New York City, 96th Street most recently.

 Now on the day corrupt Guterres denied Inner City Press' application to enter the UN on the same basis as his no-show correspondents association, we have been informed again, how unqualified UN Security guards get guns in New York City without oversight, conned NYPD into denied FOIL requests: "it is my understanding that DSS requires its SO's in NY to apply for a local civilian firearms permit. They will obviously do so privately, in their own names rather than via the UN directly which may explain the NYPD response.  The NY government procedure requires the applicant to undergo a criminal records check.  In other words, it is a discreet mechanism whereby DSS uses the NYPD permit process to check their staff for criminal convictions as the recruitment processes of the Organisation are incapable of doing it.  Obviously this can only be undertaken in NY.  There is no similar procedure (that I know of) in other duty stations and it only applies to security staff despite the myriad other sensitive functions mandated to the UN (e.g. nuclear proliferation, child protection, countering organised crime!  Not to mention the unfortunate history of Procurement and Sanctions Monitoring etc, etc, etc).  I am sure you have you own sources who could elaborate on the DSS permit requirement.        More generally, the issue is systemic one.  Recruitment to the UN requires little more than completion of a UN P11 Application Form.  If you are successful in the recruitment process (another procedure that is massively abused), HR will take-up two referee checks before making an offer.  If they are really diligent, HR may also make checks with a previous supervisor.  There is no such thing as a criminal records check!  Nil, zilch, nothing.  Thus, just about every day across the globe UN Offices, Funds, Programmes & Agencies appoint people to International Civil Service positions without any knowledge of their possible criminal history.  Few countries in the world would allow applicants to take up a government position without appropriate background checks but you can get appointed to the UN without any form of effective screening.  BTW, all the risks arising from such procedural deficits have been pointed out to OHRM on numerous occasions but it fixing it has long been placed in the ''too hard'' box.    As for the applicant referees checks, it is not uncommon for these to be fraudulent, e.g. undeclared friends, relatives or even the applicant his/herself using nondescript email addresses or the like.  As the referees are applicant nominated they are virtually worthless from an objective point of view as which applicant is going to nominate an unfavourable referee?  However, the UN recruitment system places near unilateral emphasis on these rather self-serving forms of character appraisal.    Educational credentials are another area of well defined weakness.  The whole system is rather hap-hazard.  In normal civilian employment, evaluation of educational credentials would typically be out-sourced to commercial entities who can quickly identify degree mills, fraudulent certificates etc.  The average UN HR assistant has no idea what to look for when reviewing educational documents.  Anecdotally, the UN is awash with staff citing degree mill diplomas, etc but as no-one checks systemically, or uses properly trained staff with access to relevant fraud databases, it goes largely unnoticed." We'll have more on all this - the UN of Guterres is entirely corrupt. Now Drennan is gone, too late, and another Guterres Guard is being recruited. Whoever it is must answer for the decay of DSS under Drennan, which drove at least one officer to suicide. Here's the announcement: "The Secretary-General is pleased to announce the following job opening: Under-SecretaryGeneral for Safety and Security, based at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. In order to ensure a wide pool of candidates for this position, the Secretariat welcomes applications to supplement the Secretary-General’s search and consultations. Applications of women candidates is strongly encouraged. Applications should include the curriculum vitae of the candidate with full contact information (email and telephone) and must be sent to the Secretariat of the United Nations by 29 April 2019. Applications may also be sent to eosg2019dss@un.org." We'll have more on this. In the midst of Inner City Press' questioning in 2018 about Guterres' links to now convicted UN bribery Patrick Ho's China Energy Fund Committee and Guterres' failures on Cameroon and elsewhere, his UN Security twice roughed up Inner City Press on June 22 and July 3, 2018.

Then after Inner City Press filed a New York Police Department complaint against the UN and its Lieutenant Ronald E. Dobbins, none of its written questions to UN Security chief Peter Drennan and Guterres were answered.

   On March 14, Inner City Press UN bureau chief, this reporter, was invited to press freedom event in the UN sponsored by the UN Missions of France, Lithuania and Greece. I RSVP-ed and was told to come up up my ticket at the Visitors Entrance. I did; I was given a ticket with my name on it. Tweeted photo here.

After waiting in line, I showed my drivers license and the ticket and was waved into a second line for the metal detectors, where a sign said no video allowed. Periscope video here, until voluntarily turned off. Halfway through the line, four UN Security officers and a supervisor came over and ordered me to leave, saying I am on their barred list. I asked to see the list. I was pushed from behind and told I would be shown the list outside. They took the paper ticket, saying it is property of the UN. (There's still this photo.) But once they pushed me out onto the stairs, no one came out with the list. First of a series of Periscope videos here. To this has the UN sunk.

After a UN media accreditation "review" that did not include any opportunity to be heard for Inner City Press, Guterres' Under Secretary General Alison Smale on 17 August 2018 issued a letter "withdrawing" Inner City Press' UN media accreditation. Smale was asked how Inner City Press could appeal, including by UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression David Kaye, but did not answer that.

On 3 September 2018, facing the prospect of being unable to enter the UN to cover the General Assembly "high level" week for the first time in a decade, Inner City Press submitted an application for accreditation. But there was no action on it - in fact, during high level week, it emerged that Inner City Press had been put on a non-public "barred" list such that even if invited by a member state or UN agency, it could not enter the building.

Patrick Ho of CEFC was convicted on 5 December 2018. Inner City Press again exclusively reported that Guterres had failed to include his paid position on the board of the Gulbenkian Foundation in his Public Financial Disclosure covering 2016 - and that Gulbenkian in 2018 was trying to sell its Partex Oil and Gas affiliate to CEFC as Guterres refused to audit CEFC and had Inner City Press which asked roughed up and banned.

And now on 2 January 2019 Smale's Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit has issued a denial of Inner City Press' September application for accreditation, stating only that

"Greetings Matthew LEE from ICP     INNER CITY PRESS, 

Your media accreditation request, with reference no: M72295425, has been declined for the following reason: Accreditation was withdrawn on 17 August 2018."

  This is Kafka-esque. Accreditation was withdrawn without any hearing or chance to appeal, but that decision is used to deny future accreditation. While preaching about due process and freedom of the press, Guterres' UN has a "one strike and your out" policy - even if there is no strike. The alleged violations were filming in place Smale's own MALU staff told Inner City Press it could film with out an escort, and recording her deputy in a known media stakeout position.

   Guterres is a censor, to conceal his own conflict of interest. He has failed many people, including the Anglophones being killed by the Cameroon government of Paul Biya, from whom Guterres accepted a golden statue and Budget Committee favors. This is corruption and the reporting on and exposing of it will not cease. No due process censorship by the UN is UNacceptable.

While 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: his role on the board of Gulbenkian Foundation which was trying to sell its Partex Oil affiliate to CEFC. See Inner City Press' first exclusive report here.

  Today Inner City Press continues its exclusive series on some of the CEFC connections in and through the UN that should have been identified in the audit that Guterres corruptly refused to begin, with his conflict of interest. (Even his predecessor Ban Ki-moon ordered an audit after Ng Lap Seng was indicted - Guterres still hasn't after Patrick Ho was convicted.)

   It's time to consider the Guterres-like hypocrisy of Gulbenkian, publicly tying itself to the "blue ocean economy" while taking money from the oil company Partex they tried to sell to CEFC which Guterres has covered up for. Antonio Guterres was a paid board member of Gulbenkian; his wife Catarina Vaz Pinto was paid by them as well. Antonio Guterres' daughter Mariana Guterres actively promotes Gulbenkian (as well as, troublingly, dead children in Kenya); his daughter in law Vanda Onnesjo Lobo gushes about its causes.

  In fact, Gulbenkian which tried to sell its Partex Oil to CEFC in 2018 partners with "Oceano Azul Foundation" - which just happens to have in 2018 hired Antonio Guterres' daughter in law Vanda Lobo, see here. Given Gunbenkian's business dealings with UN briber CEFC, shouldn't this all have been disclosed? Isn't it an abuse that Antonio Guterres would have the only media asking about it roughed up and banned? This is UN corruption.

(His son Pedro Guimarães e Melo De Oliveira Guterres, after being a part of the defrauding of PT Portugal as it was passed from Brazil's Oi to France's Altice, seems to have gone to ground, with not a single legitimate question about his business links answered).  But now in 2018 - and according to Guterres' publicly funded propaganda, 2019 - it is all a front. Guterres has shown himself willing to rough up a journalist who asked about this and more, banning the Press for 182 days with no end in sight.

  Consider Guterres' lead spokesman Stephane Dujarric has family links to Gulbenkian. Inner City Press asked Dujarric in writing to disclose these (no answer, and Stephane Dujarric blocks @InnerCityPress on Twitter), just as it asked him in person why CEFC wasn't being audited in March 2018, before Dujarric and Guterres had Inner City Press roughed up and banned, 180 days now. In March 2018 Gulbenkian Foundation was actively trying to sell its Partex Oil and Gas affiliate to CEFC China Energy. And here's Stephane Dujarric's Tokyo- and Temple-based brother Robert Dujarric praising and appearing at Gulbenkian - audio here, program here. We'll have more on this.

  Guterres got favors from Peter Thomson when Thomson was President of the General Assembly. Rudimentary open source research - including on the UN's own website here - finds that Thomson, like implicated Sam Kutesa and John Ashe and Vuk Jeremic, visited CEFC's Ye Jianming in Hong Kong. What was discussed? Inner City Press previously covered, critically but civilly, Thomson. Now corrupt Guterres has had Inner City Press roughed up and banned 175 days, with his Spokesman Stephane Dujarric refusing to answer any questions despite the promise of Guterres' USG Alison Smale.

   After receiving favors from Thomson as PGA, Guterres gave him a job in his Secretariat, Representative on Oceans. Here is Patrick Ho, interviewed by Guterres' DESA, on Oceans. There should have been an audit. There still should be. Another of Guterres' special advisers, Jeffrey Sachs, after denying Inner City Press' documented report Sachs was on a UN - CEFC board, abruptly closed his Twitter account, story here. Guterres goes on robo-tweeting from parts unknown, spending public money undisclosed. Guterres should explain and / or resign.  We will have more in this series.

   A now-removed Gulbenkian Foundation web page says Guterres continued as a board member into 2018. Archived here. In fact it was on 9 February 2018 that Gulbenian tweeted that Guterres was no longer on the board - AFTER it was reported that Gulbenian was trying to sell, or even had already sold, Partex to CEFC. This is called guilty knowledge.

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