| In Corrupt
UN of Guterres UNOPS Sanitation Fund Is
Dirty, Dutch Kaag Has Been Informed
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
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SDNY COURTHOUSE,
July 24 – How corrupt is the
United Nations under Antonio
Guterres, who to censor has
banned Inner City Press 1218
days? Today consider this
story of corruption,
mismanagement, racism and
other serious abuses within
the Water Supply and
Sanitation Collaborative
Council (WSSCC), a UNOPS (UN
Office for Project
Services)-hosted entity.
This story,
like so many others, is
provided to banned Inner City
Press by UN whistleblowers;
the UN of Guterres and his
spokespeople Stephane Dujarric
and Melissa Fleming refuse to
answer written question or
even law firm letters. It is
total impunity and corruption.
After 30 years of
existence, WSSCC was shut down
at the end of 2020 to become
the Sanitation and Hygiene
Fund (SHF). The transition to
SHF was a disaster, because it
was characterized by a long
series of illegalities that
led to the destruction of most
of the workforce, with the
exception of the authors of
the crimes and their closest
acolytes.
The Executive
Director of UNOPS, Grete
Faremo of Norway, was informed
all of this corruption.
However, she did not intervene
to bring the illegalities to
an end and to protect
whistleblowers according to
UNOPS' own whistleblowers
protection policy. So hte
information was provided to
donors fraud and
anti-corruption hotlines
(including SIDA, MINBUZA i.e.
the MFA of the Netherlands,
NORAD and SDC - Swiss
Cooperation).
However, despite
the fact that even an internal
investigation conducted by the
UNOPS Internal Audit and
Investigation Group (IAIG)
concluded since February 2021
that the members of the senior
management of the WSSCC (now
SHF) were responsible of
financial mismanagement,
including multiple
irregularities in recruitment
procedures and procurement
fraud, and despite the
additional abundant written
evidence of corruption and
other abuses, donors have
recently made the decision to
continue supporting
financially the UNOPS
Sanitation and Hygiene Fund
(SHF, formerly WSSCC).
There is also a
pending case in the UN Dispute
Tribunal (UNDT) concerning the
context in which the decisions
leading to the set-up of the
SHF were made, and their
validity. Among other serious
issues that the internal UNOPS
investigation disregarded,
that were brought to the
attention of the UNDT, there
is written evidence of the
corruption and conflict of
interest of the Chair of the
WSSCC/SHF Board.
From the
end of 2019, the current
Deputy Director of the SHF,
Ms. Sue Coates, with the
complicity of the Director,
Mr. Dominic O'Neill (hired by
Sue Coates when she was
Executive Director a.i.), and
senior UNOPS officials in
Geneva, New York and
Copenhagen who work directly
with Grete Faremo (which
explains why Ms. Faremo did
not take any action), paid
illegally over 200.000
USD/year to the Chair, Ms.
Hind Khatib Othman, to make or
influence a series of other
illegal decisions concerning
the SHF
organogram. In
addition, there is written
evidence of the pressures and
intimidation of some African
members of the Board who were
raising good governance issues
(for instance, a WSSCC
employee called the Minister
of Health of Uganda, a
recipient of large
Dutch-sponsored WSSCC Global
Sanitation Fund grants, to ask
her to intimidate the Ugandan
member of the Board who had
raised accountability issues),
and of a widespread climate of
racism, harassment and
discrimination across the
organization.
Given the above, the
completion of the case before
UNDT may in the near future
have impacts on the validity
of the decisions made to
establish the SHF.
However this does not seem to
be an issue neither for Ms.
Faremo nor for donors.
As a result, the persons who
committed the above-mentioned
offences are still in place at
UNOPS/SHF.
Ms. Sigrid Kaag,
Minister of Foreign Affairs of
the Netherlands (the main
WSSCC donor) was asked to have
a personal assessment of the
situation and consider to make
the decision to halt funding
to the SHF.
Under Grete
Faremo's tenure, none of the
persons who requested the
Ethics' Office intervention
were granted protection. Watch
this site.
***
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