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By Matthew Russell Lee & sources, Exclusive

UN GATE, Oct 15 – UNESCO, like the whole UN system under Antonio Guterres was been 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.

The UNESCO corruption series is now125 stories long. The 220th session of the Executive Board held its opening plenary sessions yesterday and today. Executive Board members had the enormous and unpleasant surprise to find that the ADG for (mis)management, Nicholas Jeffreys of the UK, who will be leaving UNESCO for good in two weeks' time, was present in the room and, what's more, was given the floor by DG Audrey Azoulay to answer questions from Member States about UNESCO's finances.

In this way, DG Azoulay is demonstrating to the UNESCO community that she was clearly informed in advance of the major financial error committed by her management team and did nothing to prevent it. Furthermore, she is clearly unwilling to humiliate Jeffreys despite the sanctions imposed on him, which led to his premature departure from UNESCO. The reason for this is most probably that he is perfectly aware of most of the misdeeds committed by the Azoulay administration in recent years.

Still, the two most senior UNESCO officials in charge of budget and administration, Nicholas Jeffreys and Magdolna Bona, were hastily dismissed in order to put out the fire under Azoulay's backside.  The irregular management of UNESCO's 2023 deficit revealed by Inner City Press led to their unpleasant for Azoulay eviction from their respective posts. Instead of sacking them without further ado, just after the publication of the IOS report, to protect herself, DG Azoulay plays and acts as if nothing really significant had happened. 

The fact that the Member States of the Board allowed Jeffreys to take the floor today and answer their questions as if it were business as usual speaks volumes about the current crisis at UNESCO. What happened today, despite the tangible diplomatic unease in the room, will leave serious marks on the organization.  The US representative to UNESCO, Courtney O'Donnell, has remained strangely silent in this regard, as have all the representatives of the EU and the Nordic states, despite the fact that the IOS report clearly indicates that Nicholas Jeffreys decided that the best way out was to hide from the member states the truth about the true state resulting from his decision-making on the highly sensitive budgetary issue.

 Paragraph 22 of the IOS report is very explicit in this respect: “22. Further, during the 41 C/5 budget closure and particularly at the time the overcommitment issues were being dealt with, the communications regarding the budget closure from the CFO and ADG/ADM’s office to the Director-General reflected serious shortcomings. These included a lack of transparency in terms of failure to timely disclose critical information, issuance of contradictory updates on the extent of the overcommitments, and incorrect advice on the application of UNESCO Financial Regulations on the use of 42 C/5 funds for funding the 41 C/5 overcommitments.”    In any administration, half of this paragraph would have been enough for UNESCO's ADG/ADM to be immediately dismissed. But at UNESCO, DG Azoulay is giving Nicholas Jeffreys the opportunity to address Member States again during the current Board session. Despite his grave professional error, DG Azoulay is giving him one last chance to tell member states more untruths.

 In fact, ADG/ADM's reputation has been completely demolished, not least because of the other major findings of the IOS audit report : “Weak control environment; Loss of institutional knowledge and weakened capacity; Ineffective risk management; Ineffective budget monitoring; Poor management of budget closure; Ineffective communication: During the 41 C/5 budget closure the communications from the CFO and ADG/ADM to the Director-General reflected serious shortcomings.

These included a lack of transparency in terms of failure to timely disclose critical information to the Chief Executive, issuance of contradictory updates on the extent of the overcommitments, and incorrect advice on the application of UNESCO Financial Regulations on the use of 42 C/5 funds for funding the 41 C/5 overcommitments”.  

 Make no mistake. If what is described in the IOS report has been allowed to happen, it is because all the actions taken in this respect have been approved in advance by DG Azoulay's Cabinet. As in all French ministries, and UNESCO operates according to the same model, no decision of this importance can be taken without the prior agreement of the Cabinet, and in particular of Azoulay's Cabinet director, the Frenchwoman Margaux Bergeon-Dars. Member states must therefore also question the role played by the Cabinet in this financial scandal, and not consider the CFO and the ADG for (mis)management to be the only culprits. 

This is also clearly the fault of DG Azoulay, whose corporate responsibility is fully engaged. It was she who appointed senior officials who did not respect elementary standards of morality, ethics, honesty and decency. It was she who decided to get rid of all the competent and loyal members of UNESCO's staff and replace them with her cronies. Ultimately, it is she who is responsible, and it is she who must be blamed for the decisions that have led to UNESCO's current situation of deep crisis.  This is why member states must continue to ask questions about accountability and decide on the necessary sanctions.  This time, it's the member states' money, or more precisely their taxpayers' money, and there's no escaping the accountability check.

This is where UNESCO stands today. We will have more on that. Watch this site.

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