| In Corrupt UN of Guterres UNESCO
Sinking Lower With Promotions of Bath and
Bonetti
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Video
UN GATE, Feb 8 –
From
the corrupt UN
of Antonio
Guterres in New
York, the
whole UN
system has
been corrupted now
into,
including
UNESCO.
The dismantling of the mandate
of UNESCO and of its core functions continues
in total indifference. The relevance of the
Organization is questioned. The global crisis
in leadership at the corrupted UN of Guterres
affects severely the Paris-based UN
Agency. The exposure for misdemeanors
and wrongdoings of some staff members close to
the French DG Audrey Azoulay is actually
helping them to get promoted.
Banned Inner City Press learned from its many
sources this week that both staff members
exposed in the article of 31 October 2019, on
the undercover surveillance operation of
private e-mails and mobile phones launched by
the Cabinet of Audrey Azoulay with the
assistance of the French ministry of Interior,
got duly promoted since then.
This undercover surveillance operation was
coordinated by Flavio Bonetti from the Cabinet
of Audrey Azoulay and former deputy prefect of
the Centre-Val de Loire region, who started
his career at the French ministry of Interior
in 2014, before joining UNESCO in 2018. He was
promoted from P-3 to P-4 this
year. In this surveillance
operation, Mr Bonetti was capably assisted by
another member of the Cabinet of Azoulay
usually used for the dirty work, Mr
Sachin Bath. Bath, who is at UNESCO for many
years is the perfect mole for playing both
sides and helping identifying the people and
permanent delegations deserving to be under
surveillance.
As Inner
City Press wrote at that time: “His
next job actually will be to infiltrate the
closed circle of elected member states at the
governing bodies secretariat”. And this is
precisely what happened! For his loyal dirty
services, Mr Bath was promoted by DG Azoulay
as the Director (D1) of the Secretariat of
Governing bodies (GBS). No better mole could
have been ever found by DG Azoulay for this
politically sensitive job requiring high moral
standards and total impartiality. A member of
the secretariat told Inner City Press that “he
got this position despite his reputation of
emotionless lawbreaker and his lack of
experience in dealing with GBS matters. In the
short list for this post there were by far
more experienced and knowledgeable candidates.
But the most unacceptable is the selection
procedure itself – the head of the recruitment
panel was his direct boss, which is against
all rules at UNESCO.” Favoritism and fraud,
this is what UNESCO stands for nowadays.
Another calamity for UNESCO was the
appointment of the French Shamila
Nair-Bedouelle, in the position of Assistant
Director-General (ADG) for Natural Sciences.
Shamila Nair-Bedouelle, originally from South
Africa, left the country in her youth years,
got the French nationality and built a career
in France. She was a Director of Research at
the French National Institute of Health and
Medical Research (INSERM) and is married to
the renowned French scientist Hugues
Bedouelle. Needless to say, Shamila
Nair-Bedouelle was not first on the short list
for the ADG Sciences position, but the French
connection played well in her favor and DG
Azoulay decided to appoint her instead of
appointing the most qualified candidate. What
happened since her appointment is the total
disruption in the work of the Sciences sector.
A senior staff from the Sector contacted Inner
City Press, suffering from and alarmed by her
blatant incompetence, her lack of any
managerial skills and her total absence of
political connotation which is a must for any
ADG. “The Science sector is currently slowly
collapsing. Donors who supported our work for
many years are leaving UNESCO in order to find
a more reliable partner elsewhere and those
member states concerned by the issue of water
worldwide are initiating discussions on ways
for removing her from office”. The
hemorrhagic tendency of staff separations
continues at unprecedented rates. Senior staff
members are leaving UNESCO sickened by the
working environment and this is what the
French DG precisely expects in order to
proceed unbothered with the nominations at
UNESCO of another bunch of French
technocrats. Staff associations keep
voicing their concerns of those alarming
practices resurfacing in the total absence of
respect for rules and regulations. They keep
opposing the new situation in which top senior
managers can exert totalitarian control over
the staff including by using intimidation and
harassment that force staff members into fear
and obedience. Despite all
exposure, little progress has been achieved
mainly because of the criminal complicity of
member states. Their political stance is
actually a green light to DG Azoulay for her
to keep up with those practices and scale them
up. Measures are yet to be taken and
sanction imposed in the following major
pending cases listed by staff:
1) The first-time undercover surveillance
operation at UNESCO that is coordinated by
Flavio Bonetti from the Cabinet of Audrey
Azoulay and former deputy prefect of the
Centre-Val de Loire region, with the
assistance of the expert in dirty work, Mr
Sachin Bath.
2) The administrative deviation of
hierarchical reporting lines - the Director of
Cabinet Nicolas Kassianides unprecedented
power to control and supervise the Deputy
Director general of UNESCO and the Assistant
Directors general of the program Sectors. This
is disrupting the work of the entire
Organization, since at the top of it there is
evident no respect for regular lines of
authority.
3) The staff members cases lost in Geneva
where UNESCO got sentenced by the ILOAT to pay
hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ money. IOS
must investigate the work of the senior staff
members in HRM dealing with contested cases,
namely A. Grisar and A. Duganis. A sanction
that would certainly put an end to this
persisting detrimental situation in dealing
with personnel files, is an automatic wage
withholding of HRM managers so as to reimburse
the financial loss for the Organization
provoked by their incompetence in dealing with
contested files.
4) The Director of the Cabinet Nicolas
Kassianides, is still using an official car
without being entitled to do so. Even more
unacceptable is the fraud with petrol
orchestrated by the French driver of Audrey
Azoulay.
5) The appointment of dozens French officials
in the Cabinet of the DG Azoulay in an effort
to turn UNESCO into a branch of Quai d’Orsay
and the consultancy contracts for the children
of several Ambassadors to UNESCO.
6) The misuse of tax-payers money in large
proportions. The financial services of Azoulay
authorized a payment of some 450,000 US
dollars to an unknown financial institution in
London. After effecting the payment, those
funds vanished in someone’s pocket. Still no
disciplinary measures taken in the corrupted
UNESCO of Audrey Azoulay.
7) The special internal arrangement by the
Cabinet of D-G Azoulay granting impunity to
those accountable for the unjustifiable and
speculative spending of some 2 million dollars
by UNESCO without compensation. In two
separate contracts, one for 1.536.000 EURO,
and another one for 180.000 EURO, UNESCO
contracted a French company to do the core
redesign of the organization’s financial and
administrative systems and tools.
Subsequently, those amounts had been paid to
the French enterprise without getting the
expected deliverables. Anyone will go to jail
or the responsible officer will rather get
promoted?
8) The Culture sector was poorly reformed by
DG Audrey Azoulay and her assistant director
general for Culture, the Chilean Ernesto
Ottone Ramirez. Staff in the Culture
sector are blaming openly the arrogant and
heavy-handed management style of Ottone
Ramirez with even some dark and very UN talks
of a "baby-Pinochet." Will IOS evaluate
the negative impact for UNESCO of this reform
of the Culture Sector?
9) UNESCO launched the “Revive the Spirit of
Mosul” initiative ostensibly to participate in
the reconstruction of this city, after years
of war and destruction. This seemingly
noble initiative was in fact a cover up
operation of reinforcing French influence in
Iraq in order to secure markets and work for
French companies. The Director of the UNESCO
office in Baghdad, Louise Haxthausen, was
removed straight away, since she was
considered by Kassianides too close to the
government of Iraq after her several years of
experience in the country, and too independent
in her dealing with issues that progressively
became sensitive for French national
interests. Would all that be ever investigated
in the corrupted UN of Guterres?
10) Several cases of sexual and moral
harassment have been reported to IOS but
because of the smokescreen by the Cabinet of
DG Azoulay, no sanctions were imposed and
disciplinary measures are yet to be taken
against the perpetrators of those criminal
deeds. It appears, that since her election, DG
Audrey Azoulay totally disregarded for two
years the Constitution of UNESCO as well as
her oath pronounced as per the usual ritual at
the beginning of her mandate. The big
question is what will the president of the
General Conference (Turkey) and the chairman
of the Executive Board (Equatorial Guinea) do
in order to bring to an end this
anti-constitutional behavior or the
Director-General. The Constitution of
UNESCO does not provide legal basis for an
impeachment process. Still, member states
consider constitutionally unbearable to allow
the continuation of DG’s politically biased
Administration. Therefore, in the specific
case of DG Azoulay, after all the collected
and duly exposed evidences with respect to
her unreserved allegiance to the French
national authorities, a specific mechanism
will have to be established by the Chairs of
the two main governing bodies in order to
ensure that French DG Audrey Azoulay is
subject to the utmost disciplinary sanctions
and consequently removed from office before
the end of her mandate in 2021. In the
case of DG Azoulay, there is no danger
whatsoever of a partisan, politically
motivated impeachment that would lower the bar
for imposing the ultimate sanction – the
political equivalent of the death penalty – on
future Director-generals. But at the UN,
after all the cases of Heads of Agencies
successfully revoked, the impeachment case of
DG Azoulay must set an example
internationally. It is obvious that the
French Government and the rich club countries
will flip-flop on those impeachment principles
and try to protect the French DG, since they
are all aware that getting the UNESCO top
position again by one of them in the near
future is a mirage. Will that short-sighted
strategy work? The future will tell. This is
where UNESCO stands today. We will have more
on that.
***
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