In
UN of Guterres Tech Planner
Suzuki *Merely Talked* To Wall
Street Lobbyists Amid Censorship
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Updated Aug 16
UNITED NATIONS
GATE, August 15 – At
the UN of
Secretary
General
Antonio
Guterres, top
jobs are doled
out to
unqualified
people based
on favoritism,
top officials
like Ayaka
Suzuki
Director of
Guterres'
Strategic
Planning and
Monitoring
Unit slowly
set their eyes
on the greener
pastures of
Silicon Valley
while in New
York given
speeches to
Wall Street
lobbying
associations
like SIFMA,
the Securities
Industry and
Financial
Markets
Association.
After days of
receiving no
answers to
written
questions from
Guterres two
spokesman -
who have Inner
City Press
banned from
"their"
briefing for
44 days and
counting --
Inner City
Press ran a
story, based
on complaints
it received
from within in
the UN it is
banned from
that Suzuki is
wasting public
money in
Silicon Valley
and, the
sources said,
had a formal
board role in
SIFMA. While
leaving
questions
about, for
example,
Guterres'
meeting with
Cameroon
lobbyists
unanswered, on
August 16 his
lead spokesman
Stephane
Dujarric sent
a partial
answer - even
on this, Inner
City Press
asked the
cost, which
has not been
given -- which
we publish in
full.
Question:
"Please
confirm that
Ayaka Suzuki,
Director of
the Strategic
Planning and
Monitoring
Unit,
Executive
Office of the
Secretary-General
is on the
board of
directors of a
Wall Street
lobbying
group, SIFMA
https://www.sifma.org/people/ayaka-suzuki/
and unless you
deny, please
immediately
explain how
lobbying for
the securities
industry is
consistent
with UN rules
and
principles.
Separately,
please
immediately
provide your
response to
this, provided
to Inner City
Press by a
whistleblower:
Ayaka Suzuki
“is almost
living out of
Silicon Valley
these days!
She persuaded
Eosg to create
a New Tech Way
of Doing
Business post
so she can
travel and do
the bidding of
the Silicon
Valley.” Does
this post
exist? How
much is spent
on it? Does it
consist of
lobbying for
Silicon Valley
firms?"
Dujarric's lone
answer, in full: "If you
had bothered
looked at the
listing of
Board Members
of SIFMA,
would have
seen for
yourself that
Ayaka Suzuki
not a member
of the Board
of that
organization
(https://www.sifma.org/about/board-officers/)
She
represented
the Deputy SG
at one of
their events
on 7 February
2018 on
financing the
SDGs. Her
remarks were
delivered on
behalf of the
DSG. UN
officials
regularly
speak at
events to
promote the
work of the
UN. These
events are
organized by
governments,
NGOs, private
sector
academia, the
media etc… To
make it
perfectly
clear, Ms.
Suzuki had no
contact with
SIFMA before
the event and
has had no
contact since.
We would
appreciate you
correcting
your stories
on Ms. Suzuki,
who you
describe as a
“moonlighting
securities
industry
lobbyist.”
That is
clearly false
and not rooted
in any facts.
As part of her
work in the
Executive
Office, she’s
works on
exploring new
ways that
fully embrace
the technology
that is
available to
us. It’s about
working
better. To
claim that she
“practically
lives” in
Silicon Valley
is beyond
ridiculous. I
would
appreciate
posting this
response in
full." And
it's done. Now
what about the
dozens of
other
unanswered
questions and
44 days of
censorship?
As to non
disclosure or confidentiality
agreements in the UN Pension
Fund audit committee, Dujarric
did not see fit to answer
that, and bans Inner City
Press from his brieifng for 44
days. But such NDA practices
are the subject of extensive
media coverage a mere three
hour train ride south, but at
the UN the Press which reports
on them is roughed up by
Guterres UN Security and has
been banned
from entering the UN for 43
days and counting.
Less than
this is criticized, by the UN
and in 100 upcoming August 16
editorials. But the UN's
self-regulating mechanisms
have become more corrupted
under Guterres. This August 15
afternoon story is about
moonlighting securities
industry lobbyist Ayaka Suzuki, who
at the UN is Director of
Guterres' Strategic Planning
and Monitoring Unit. Beyond
the Wall Street-ization of,
and ouster of new media Inner
City Press from, the UN under
Guterres, Ayaka Suzuki is
ironically promoting more use
of technology by the UN, where
Guterres has someone else
tweeting for him (including
kites, here)
and his Communicator Alison
Smale mostly just retweets her
former employer the New York
Times, while ghoulishly
censoring the Press. Here's
from Ayaka Suzuki's email
leaked to Inner City Press and
some of her report (the rest
is on Patreon, here),
cc-ed to such Guterres
insiders and partners in
censorship as
Fabrizio
Hochschild and Maher
Nasser, Smale's deputy
who blocks Inner City Press on
Twitter, still, while seeing
his vindictive threat
to ban Inner City Press
bearing fruit, hiding behind
others:
"From: Ayaka Suzuki
Sent: Thursday, August 2, 2018
12:20 PM
To: Pingfan Hong; Anja Therese
Kaspersen; Christopher Fabian;
Christopher King; David Kelly;
doreen.bogdan (itu.int);
Gillian Goh; kirkpatrick
(unglobalpulse.org); Kayoko
Gotoh; Maher Nasser; Marion
Barthelemy; Michele Griffin;
Michelle Gyles-Mcdonnough;
pinheiro (ilo.org); Maloor,
Preetam; Remo Lalli; Robert
OPP; Simona Petrova-Vassileva;
Teresa Whitfield; Kerstin
Vignard; Peggy Lynn Hicks;
James Cockayne; Hamid Rashid;
Salem Avan; Pauwels, Eleonore;
Josiane Toundzi Dzouankeu;
Malin Oestevik; Claire
Messina; Johanna JOCHIM
Cc: Fabrizio Hochschild; David
Kelly
Subject: SG New Tech Strategy
- final implementation plan
Dear Colleagues, Thank you for
your participation in the
Reference Group meeting on
Monday and for those of you
who submitted written feedback
to the implementation
plan. It’s greatly
appreciated.
David Kelly has
consolidated your feedback
into a final draft and we
kindly request your final
review and provide comments to
David ([ ]@un.org) by
Wednesday, 8 August –
recognizing that some entities
may wish to add their names to
certain actions.
We will begin
implementing many of the
points next week and will
continue to support those
actions already ongoing.
Your participation in this
roll-out will be critical and
we count on your continuing
commitment to this process!
Ayaka Suzuki
Director, Strategic Planning
& Monitoring Unit
Executive Office of the
Secretary-General
United Nations S-3752"
From the
leaked memo: "SG Strategy on
New TechnologyImplementation
Plan
Successful implementation of
the SG’s Strategy for New
Technology will enable the UN
to more effectively support
the responsible use of new
technologies and accelerate
achievement of the SDGs.
Evidence for success will be
through the roll-out of
outcome-driven activities
under each Strategy’s four
commitments – recognizing that
many activities will support
the achievement of multiple
outcomes – and an
organizational culture that
welcomes innovation, openness
and experimentation.
Commitment 1: Deepening the
UN’s internal capacities and
exposure to new technologies
by leveraging existing and
developing new technical
skills and expertise, raising
awareness of ethical and human
rights dimensions of
implementing new technology,
and ensuring that senior UN
leadership are supported in
adopting innovative new
technology solutions. This
capacity will need to be
backstopped by research on the
impacts of new technology and
the recruitment of staff with
new technology experience into
the UN system.
Outcome 1: The UN is
recognized as a credible
practitioner of new
rights-respecting
technologies" -
really? The UN respecting
rights? We'll have more on
this.
The August 15 morning Inner
City Press story on UN
corruption was about the UN
Joint Staff Pension Fund,
whose Board met in Rome from
July 26 to August 3. (The
Rome-based publication Italian
Insider has covered Guterres'
censorship of Inner City
Press, here,
but those in charge of the UN
Pension Funds' billions seems
quite pleased or acquiescent
to it. Guterres is overseeing
and allowing UN litigation
against Italian Insider.) On
the Pension Fund corruption
and cover up front, a recent
audit, of the type Guterres
has refused to start about the
CEFC UN bribery scandal,
showed that the Fund’s
management used a $400,000
contract with a "Big Four
consulting firm" - Inner City
Press exclusively identified
it as PWC before being roughed
up and ousted from Guterres'
UN -- to then procure an
additional $1.8 million of
unrelated services, which
Inner City Press reported to
be outside UN procurement
rules. As the $1.8 million had
not been subject to
competitive bidding, the
consulting firm billed
extensively on hours for
senior partners. But in Rome,
this audit was not shared with
UN Pension Board members. The
Board’s audit committee, which
was aware of the audits, chose
not to disclose its views on
these audits. The Audit
Committee also withheld from
the Board that the Fund’s
management had not accepted
recommendations from the
Office of Internal Oversight
Services, to which Inner City
Press has repeatedly written
throughout this summer of
censorship, that would prevent
such events from happening
again. Those impacted say that
audit committee members were
required to sign a
confidentiality agreement -
echoes from 200 miles south.
One
recommendation coming out of
the Rome UN Pension Board
meeting is to give the UNJSPF
Deputy CEO job to an
under-qualified French
candidate, Thibaud Beroud. The
Deputy CEO post is important:
the CEO of the Pension Fund
has been out on extended sick
leave, like Heidi Mendoza the
head of OIOS. Beroud has
worked at the French Senate's
3000 member pension fund for
nine years -- but even the
UN's job notice for the Deputy
CEO position at the UNJSPF,
with 200,000 members, requires
a full 15 years of such
experience. (Inner City Press
is publishing the job notice
and Beroud's French Linked in
resume on Patreon, here.)
But this is how the UN works,
under Guterres. His Jan
Beagle, who under the changes
Guterres managed to get
through the UN Budget
Committee by remaining silent
on killings by Committee Chair
Tommo Monthe's Cameroon, will
be responsible for see that
(or if) Human Resources rules
are followed, has been made
aware of the problems but it
is UNclear what she is doing
about it. Ultimately as with
the expanding UN sexual abuse
and harassment scandals, the
rot is due to Guterres, and
his response has been...
censorship.
Because the
initial pretext of Guterres
and his "Global Communication"
ex-NYT bureau chief Alison
Smale to rough up and ban
Inner City Press, that it was
prohibited from covering the
UN Budget Committee meetings
as it has for ten years, fell
apart, Guterres' spokesman
Farhan Haq told Fox
News: “there have been a
number of allegations from
fellow journalists that Lee
has harassed them over the
years. 'A lot of journalists
have not just been harassed
but threatened by him and
that’s a problem,' Haq said.”
That
last line is extraordinary.
Without identifying a single
one of these "lot of
journalists," Haq declares
their anonymous allegations to
be true: "HAVE not just been
harassed but threatened me
him." This stands in contrast
to the UN not accepting - in
the case
of Alison Smale and Stephane
Dujarric, trying to not even
acknowledge receiving - Inner
City Press' written, on the
record allegations complete
with exhibits. It's called
favoritism, and censorship.
This same
Farhan Haq recently answered one
of Inner City Press' written
questions, about why Guterres
had taken no action on its
documented exclusive May 24 report
for which it received threats
(and subsequent letter
to Guterres and Smale) that
through presumptive nepotism,
management of the UN Security
Council's website had been given
to John
van Rosendaal,
the
photographer husband of Kyoko
Shiotani, the
chief of staff of Guterres'
Under Secretary General for
Political Affairs Rosemary
DiCarlo, previously US Deputy
Ambassador to the UN under Susan
Rice and Samantha Power. Haq responded,
"If there are
allegations of misconduct they
should be taken to the internal
oversight offices and
mechanisms. Unfounded
allegations do not constitute a
formal complaint." So how does
Haq for the UN now deem
anonymous allegations against
Inner City Press not only as
formal complaints, and as true?
How
corrupt has Guterres' UN
become? 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. Finally on July 30, with
Inner City Press still banned
from the UN by Guterres for
the 27th day in a row,
Guterres' deputy spokesman
Farhan Haq after the noon
briefing Inner City Press
could not attend emailed this,
which we publish in full: "If
there are allegations of
misconduct they should be
taken to the internal
oversight offices and
mechanisms. Unfounded
allegations do not constitute
a formal complaint. Mr. Van
Rosendaal was hired via proper
channels in accordance with
standard procedures. He is
fully qualified for the job.
The Security Council website
has not been “given” to
anybody. Mr. Van Rosendaal is
the project manager for SCAD.
Other UN offices are also
involved in this
project. We will leave
it up to the Member State to
announce its involvement, but
Mr. Van Rosendaal’s position
is outside the budget provided
by the Member State. His
nationality had nothing to do
with his hiring." So it seems
that the information provided
to Guterres and his team on
July 25 was not even passed on
by him or his team to OIOS.
We'll have more on this OIOS -
watch this site. 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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