UN
Financial Disclosure Spotty,
Inconsistent From 2016 to 2013,
Yemen Envoy Missing, Cover Ups
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive Series
UNITED NATIONS,
April 5 – The UN's public
financial disclosures for its
officials, from new Secretary
General Antonio Guterres on
down, are inconsistent and
almost uselessly vague - but
most striking is the failure
of some officials to make any
disclosure at all.
From the list of
2016 disclosures, filed this
year, officials such as Yemen
envoy Ismael Ould Cheikh Ahmed
and counter-terrorism chief
Jean-Pierre Laborde are
absent. In the past, an
official declining to make any
disclosure was listed, checking
a box
that he or she choose not to
disclose. Now the names are
simply not listed. But if UN
envoy on Syria Staffan de
Mistura filed for 2016
(property in Italy and a
suspended board membership, here),
why is UN envoy on Yemen
Ismael Ould Cheikh Ahmed not
listed at all? Envoy to Libya
Bernardino Leon, who sold out
for a job with the UAE, was
never listed.
Where is the enforcement?
And what inquiries are done?
The chief operating officer of
the UN Office for Project
Services, which as Inner City
Press exposed
was used for hiring on the UN's
38th floor, in 2016 listed a
bond fund in Bermuda.
Why in Bermuda?
Not
to get too personal, but as
Guterres' 100th day as
Secretary General approaches,
we will compare his 2016 disclosure
with those made while he
headed UNHCR. (Guterres'
holdover spokesman Stephane
Dujarric has tried to call
Inner City Press' coverage of
the UN "despicable" after
having Inner City Press thrown
out of the UN Press Briefing
Room and the UN, and still
restricting it.) Guterres
in his February 22, 2017 filing
lists property in Portugal and,
as income, "Lifetime
entitlement as former Prime
Minister of Portugal,
Government of Portugal." In
2013 he listed only
a house in Portugal. Did he
not have the lifetime entitlement
then?
Another
comparison, for now: Sigrid
Kaag in 2013, along with
extensive Swiss real estate, listed
"Shares, Zeit Olive Oil,
Occupied Palestinian
Territories." By 2016
these shares were gone, along
with any reference to the OPT
or as Rima Khalaf's disclosure
put
it, the State of Palestine -
and shares had been purchased
of Twitter, ironic given that
Kaag blocks Inner City Press
on Twitter, like the UN's Cameroon
resident coordinator Najat
Rochdi and Ban Ki-moon's son
in law Siddharth Chatterjee,
promoted by Ban without recusal
to be the UN's top person in
Kenya. This last is a
remainder that the UN is a
place of nepotism and
sometimes corruption, both
defended by cover-ups and
censorship such as that
visited by now-gone Cristina
Gallach on Inner City Press,
for covering UN corruption,
eviction without any hearing
or appeal, and restrictions
ongoing though now,
post-Gallach, sought to be reversed.
We'll have more on this.
***
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