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By Matthew Russell Lee & sources, Exclusive

UN GATE, Oct 2 – UNESCO, like the whole UN system under Antonio Guterres is falling apart in corruption and fraud.

  Inner City Press has been reporting on serious malfeasance by the French Audrey Azoulay administration at UNESCO in Paris, almost as bad as Antonio Guterres' corruption in and of the UN in New York. A fish rots from the head.

Despite all that has been revealed so far, few corrective measures have been taken by the member states, whose criminal complicity is encouraging Azoulay's administration to sink even deeper into the indisputable bankruptcy of UNESCO. 

Last week, another subject came to the fore. The United Nations is notorious for its hidden systems of corruption. This is no longer the case. Azoulay's dealings with private companies such as Prada, Louis Vuitton and Dior, among others, for his personal benefit, flourish unchallenged and unopposed by member states. Take a deep breath and look at this

When at the UN, helping businesses to make money is simply forbidden as totally against the rules, here comes the Prada company openly bragging about using the DG of UNESCO’s image for their own business profit. Anyone from the Nordic and EU ambassadors bothered by it? We will follow thoroughly on that one.  At the UN, it's simply forbidden to help companies make money, as it's totally against the rules, and now the Prada company is openly boasting about using the image of UNESCO's DG for its own commercial gain.

 At UNESCO, the Ethics Office is responsible for administering UNESCO’s Declaration of Interest and Financial Disclosure Program (FDP). The primary purpose of the FDP is to identify, mitigate and manage conflicts of interest arising from employees’ financial holdings, private affiliations and/or outside activities while striking the right balance between their private interests and their obligations towards the Organization in exercising due diligence.  Avoiding conflicts of interest is the duty of all UNESCO employees and is in the best interest of the Organization in order to preserve the individuals’ as well as UNESCO’s integrity. This is what we read at the webpage of the Ethics office of the Agency. The reality is obviously different, and DG Azoulay has proved that she has no intention of abiding by the rules when they conflict with her own private interests and financial benefits. 

Will DG make her FDP public? Guterres lied on his financial disclosure, omitting his link to the bribery firm CEFC China Energy and now refusing all Press questions about it.

 The Chairperson of the Executive Board, Serbian Tamara Rastovac Siamashvili may ask her to do so, and make it available to all member states after this article is published. IOS Director Bernardin Assiene will do nothing about it, as usual, but will probably complain that his hands are tied – in fact, only by his own cowardice and fear of his own shadow.  At the UN level rules are also strict in this regard. Thus, in the UN, a conflict of interest occurs when private interests, such as outside relationships or financial assets, interfere—or appear to interfere—with the interests of the UN, making it difficult for staff to fulfil their UN duties impartially. How will fat Tony Guterres react to that latest UNESCO scandal is yet to be seen.  What is certain is that the appeal made by the number two of the Spanish delegation to UNESCO is very much in the spirit of all those who admire the soundness of his words and the courage to say openly what most state representatives think without having the right or the audacity to express it openly.

 In his letter, the Deputy Permanent Delegate of Spain, Íñigo Ramírez de Haro, also openly called for DG Azoulay to be removed from office at the next session of the General Conference in November 2023:  “Dear Colleagues, Today is my last day at Unesco. It is true that the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered me to stay until the end of the year, but I have declined. I cannot stay one more day in an Organization where there is NO freedom of expression. I will tell you what happened at the last Executive Council. Many of you were in Room II when, in the FA Commission, I made the intervention, which I attach above, on item "216 EX/13. Human Resources Management Strategy".

A few minutes later I took the floor again to retract what I said. Many of you would think that I have some mental problem of bipolarity, but no, in principle, I am in perfect health.  What happened is that the Director General personally called the Spanish Ambassador to tell him that if I did not retract what I said, she had already written the WhatsApp that she would immediately address to the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs. I am not a martyr, so I retracted my statement immediately to avoid being expelled from Unesco that same day, that is, to avoid being left without a salary and on the street. In this way the Director-General was only confirming what I denounced: that the majority of Unesco staff live in fear, if not terror, of being expelled, that is to say, unemployed, if they express their opinions freely under a management with signs of nepotism and arrogance never before seen in Unesco, and of dictatorial, despotic and irresponsible methods.

As in all dictatorships, Unesco staff are not asked to think, but to obey and flatter their bosses. Thus it is impossible for Unesco to continue to be a laboratory of ideas.  And if we add to this the fact that in Unesco a "general debate" is neither debate nor general, a "strategic transformation" is neither transformation nor strategic and so on, because a kind of "neolingua" has been created where words do not mean what they are defined in dictionaries in order to achieve the total subjugation of both staff and Member States, we are at a very worrying point. Do not be taken for a ride and do not let them steal your words! Because the greatest danger facing Unesco today is not geopolitical confrontation or other such conflicts, but falling into "irrelevance"... into the irrelevance of blah, blah, blah. I would just like to remind you, finally, that if we have reached this situation it is due to the neglect, desinterest and apathy of the Member States, in the manner of what La Boetie called: "Voluntary servitude".

Let me insist one last time that the Secretariat, including the DG and all the Directors, are at the service of the Member States, and not the other way around. The time has come to say "Enough is enough" and to remember the words of Mandelstam: "Silence is the real crime against humanity". Therefore, in my personal opinion, I would encourage you, in order to recover and save Unesco, to think about getting rid of the current Director General as early as the General Conference in November 2023. It does not matter that it is not the custom, for as the Roman Emperor Claudius said two thousand years ago: "Remember, Senators, that all traditions were once new". Goodbye, friends. It has been a pleasure. And I bid farewell with the wise words of the great Don Quixote to his squire Sancho in Miguel de Cervantes' novel: "Where one door closes, another opens". Íñigo Ramírez de Haro

 We could never have expected that all the revelations made in our publications about UNESCO would be so clearly confirmed by a representative of a member state, and what's more, of a member state of the European Union. This corroborates the fact that, in a normal situation of functioning of the Agency, all the scandals and financial malfeasance exposed must lead to the dismissal of the Frenchwoman Azoulay from the DG's office.  In recent times, several heads of UN agencies have resigned after their mismanagement, corruption and abuse of power files landed in the media. The former Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, stepped down six months before the expiration of his term because of “defective leadership” that tolerated “a culture of harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying, and abuse of power”. The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, Pierre Krähenbühl, resigned after a scandal involving accusations of nepotism and abuses of authority. The investigation, leaked to the press, depicted an “inner circle” around Krähenbühl, accused of “engag[ing] in misconduct, nepotism, retaliation … and other abuses of authority.”  The UN’s environment chief, Erik Solheim, got sacked following severe criticism of his internal rule-breaking. The audit revealed that Solheim had “no regard for abiding by the set regulations and rules”. The UN biodiversity Chief, Cristiana Pasça Palmer, had to resign after leaked internal audit documents described a chaotic work environment at the Secretariat and allegations that Pasça Palmer discriminated African staff members on the basis of their race.  The next one should be Audrey Azoulay.

 As we wrote above, some have been dismissed for other good reasons - this UNESCO DG should be dismissed for not respecting the ground rules which state that private companies are not allowed to advertise and make money on the basis of the image of a senior official holding a cushy UN job.  The deep moral and corruption crisis in which UNESCO finds itself today may be resolved only by those who fund the Organization and take responsibility for taxpayers' money. This is where UNESCO stands today, a UN Agency propitious to the flourishing of corruption, embezzlement, abuse of power and nepotism. We will have more on that. Watch this site.

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