Reports
of Nepotism for UN's Ban Ki-moon Removed From Internet After Legal
Threats by
Ban's Son in Law
By
Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, August 22 -- The son in law of UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon, Siddarth Chatterjee, had used threats of legal action to
force the removal from the Internet of comments that he may have
gotten his promotion with the UN Office of Project Services in
Copenhagen due to nepotism, Inner City Press has learned.
In
preparing its exclusive
August 14 article on nepotism at the UN and
Ban's position on and in it, Inner City Press ran across an article
in the Indian Star online, which cited Inner City Press' previous
piece on Chatterjee's promotion with the UN in Iraq. Recently, that
Indian Star article and comments were taken off the Internet --
following a threat from
Chatterjee and then by his India-based lawyer. Click here for
the
now-empty page.
Free press advocates express concern at the threats,
noting that in such matters "the cover-up is always worse that
the crime," and demanding that Ban Ki-moon rebuke and renounce
them. But will it happen?
Here
for the
record, and as requested by free press advocates in several
continents, are comments which were on the Indian Star page which
Ban's son in law, not stopped and presumably encouraged by Ban, got
removed from the Internet by legal intimidation:
(Replied:
Saturday, May 02, 2009, 06:05 am EST)
Interesting
indeed. Some of us have, until very recently, had the misfortune of
being exposed to this man, in a professional sense, in Iraq.
Spineless is a very appropriate term to use in describing this
individual. There are more, but few are fit for publication. He is,
indeed, a discredit to India, the Indian Army, and now the UN (where,
incidentally, he has recently moved on significant promotion -
despite already being totally over-promoted in the opinion of all
that know, and have to work with, him). The recent recruitment of
this man to the United Nations Office of Project Services in
Copenhagen is yet another example of the ineptitude, nepotism and
corruption which is so prevalent within the UN system, even at the
highest levels (in this case, within UNOPS). But those in Baghdad are
delighted that UNOPS has taken him away from Iraq all the same.
It
is a shame. And it would appear people are still being fooled.
and
Posted:
Saturday, February 28, 2009, 06:34 am EST
SANDHAYA
AGARWAL (India)
Siddharth
Chatterjee is a spineless man .He could not even pass the staff exams
in Indian Army ... IT IS A SHAME THAT
United Nations... GET FOOLED
After
the Indian
Star article and its comments went offline, they still remained
available in the cache of Google and other search engines.
Ban's son in law's lawyers made more legal threats -- "this is
round two of the Bans and Google," said one observer of plans by
the UN to get Inner City Press removed from Google News, click here
for the most recent -- to get it out of cache.
Now even that censorship of questions of
nepotism within Ban's UN has been
accomplished -- click here
for the now empty cache page.
Siddarth Chatterjee a public figure,
and thus his legal threats are spurious, even an abuse of process. He
is the son in law of the UN Secretary General, he was awarded a job
at the UN's D-2 level (see below. Now, after refusing to answer Inner
City
Press' repeated questions referred by Ban's Spokesperson's Office if
Chatterjee is a D-2 or a D-1, UNOPS tells other journalists
that he is a D-1, in order to forestall other media coverage. Will it
work?
UN's top lawyer O'Brien and Ban Ki-moon,
legal threats of son in law not shown
Most
recently,
UNOPS in Copenhagen has told a Nordic newspaper what Chatterjee is a
D-1, without explaining that the post was described by UNOPS' deputy
director, in writing, as a D-2 post:
From:
Vitaly VANSHELBOIM
Sent:
03 March 2009 11:09
To:
UNOPS - EMO
Subject:
Welcome to the new mailgroup
As
you know, yesterday EUO and MEO formally merged into a new regional
office called EMO (Europe and the Middle East) based in
Copenhagen...I will be acting Regional Director of EMO until we have
recruited a “permanent” replacement. In response to our
advertisement for the D-2 regional
director job, we received some 130
applications. Five candidates were short-listed for interviews: four
were interviewed last Friday and the last interview is scheduled for
Thursday this week. We’d like to make a decision by mid-March.
So
even assuming
that, as in Iraq, the UN decided even if only belatedly to keep Mr.
Chatterjee a level below the grade of the post they awarded him, that
is only being done to discourage press coverage of nepotism.
Even
this raises questions of whether Ban, who came into the UN system
promising reform and to run things cleanly, is due to his relatives'
promotions so paranoia and angry about questions of nepotism that he
has a conflict of interest in dealing with charges of nepotism
against others in the UN, for example his own envoy to the Congo Alan
Doss -- click here
for that.
Inner
City Press
broke the story about Alan Doss asking the UN Development Program for
"leeway," to bend hiring rules and give his daughter
Rebecca Doss a job in UNDP's Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific
leading to a "man bite
man" incident which was the focus of
other media's follow up coverage. After Inner City Press' story about
Ban and nepotism early on August 14, Ban's Deputy Spokesperson wrote
to Inner City Press that:
From:
okabe@un.org
To:
matthew.lee@innercitypress.com
Sent:
8/14/2009 7:57:02 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj:
your latest entry
What
I said was that queries on the biting incident should be directed to
the NY County DA Office.
On
the allegations, we take the matter very seriously.
"The
Secretary-General is aware of the situation. He has been assured that
a thorough independent investigation is underway, He takes this
matter very seriously, and expects to see a report upon his return to
NY."
Ban
Ki-Moon
returned to New York from his South Korea vacation and delivered
prepared remarks at a World Humanitarian Day event in the UN's
visitors' lobby on August 19. He took no questions. On August 21,
after waiting two days, Inner City Press asked Ms. Okabe if Ban had
as he expected now received the report on nepotism, and what would he
do about it?
Ms.
Okabe answered
that although Ban had returned to New York, he had gone on leave
again. So finally, what will he do?
Footnotes:
in the course of legally threatening the Indian newspaper -- but not
U.S. based Inner City Press -- it was argued that the Indian Star
report which triggered the two comments Chatterjee and Ban did not
like was "based only on a blog." The response was that
Inner City Press is better read, at least online, than the Indian
newspaper they threatened.
On that, Reuters
of August 21 reported
that "U.N. officials also complain bitterly about the
indefatigable blogger Matthew Lee, whose website Inner City Press
regularly accuses Ban and other U.N. officials of hypocrisy and
failing to keep their promises to reform the United Nations and root
out corruption." Later, a telling second phrase was added:
"(Some U.N. officials accuse Lee of not always getting his facts
right, but his blog
has become unofficial required reading for U.N.
staffers around the world.)"
Ironically,
on
August 20 a UN under secretary general approached Inner City Press
about the anti-Ban
memo by Norwegian deputy permanent representative
Mona Juul, having "just read it on your blog." For all of Ms.
Juul's
criticism of Ban, from Myanmar to Sri Lanka to climate change, Juul
missed the nepotism and family connection angle. Her husband Terje
Roed Larsen works for Ban, as another of his Under Secretaries
General who has refused to make any disclosure of his finance or to
answer Inner City Press' questions about them.
This
is run for the
proposition that as well as being a nepotism cover up scandal, this
is a story about new media. Ban and his son in law have lawyers
threaten ill-read newspapers for daring to carry a report based on
what they call the "blog" Inner City Press and two
resulting comments. They urge what they view as "real" or
mainstream media not to cover stories which are broken by Inner City
Press -- which, for example, had the world
exclusive, acknowledged on Associated Press and in
Japan media amog others, of the final draft of the Security Council's
North Korea sanctions.
Inner
City Press, which writes more about
Myanmar than other UN based correspondents, was never
even told of
the opportunity, given to others, to accompany and report on Ban's
ultimately failed trip there. Some say that in all this, Ban is
being ill-advised by those around him. The question remains: is this
anachronistic media strategy of cover up, deployed by Team Ban,
working? Watch this site.
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