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By Matthew Russell Lee & sources, Exclusive

UN GATE, Oct 23 – 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 now more than 140 stories long.  Last week, October 16, was the last day of the Executive Board. It was also its last session—and therefore the last meeting for Director-General Azoulay. Normally, this is an emotional moment, when, as tradition dictates, Member States pay tribute to the outgoing Director-General and the Chair of the Executive Board. 

But not this time.

 DG Azoulay's celebration was derailed by states that amended, for the first time in the Organization's history, the draft resolution containing the words of tribute. Much of what Azoulay's office wanted for her was deleted, modified, reduced, or downplayed.  Let’s take the example of the last 3 paragraphs. In paragraph 14 - the text proposed by Azoulay’s Cabinet was: “Welcoming her qualities of openness, diplomacy and vision which have strengthened (…). It was all deleted by Member States and became “Recognizing her engagement in promoting UNESCO’s role (…)”. In paragraph 15, “Hailing her success” was deleted as well and the paragraph now reads: “Appreciating her engagement”. In paragraph 16. “(…) and conveys to her its gratitude”.

The word “deep” before gratitude was deleted.  Even more disturbing for DG Azoulay's good mood and quite insulting to her ego was the deletion of the entire paragraph 17, which she had proposed as follows: “Expresses the hope, that the coming years will offer new opportunities to share with the international community the fruits of her leadership; experience and commitment to the ideals of peace, education science, culture and access to information for all”.

That's it. Period. Member States simply crushed the most ambitious part of Azoulay's tribute. No member state clearly wanted Audrey Azoulay to continue sharing her “experience and commitment” with the international community in the future. 

The amendments made to this draft resolution (link to the final version here) irritated Audrey Azoulay so much, that she decided not to attend the last day of the Executive Board meeting and to be represented by the Deputy Director-General (from China).

She thus ended her term with a new and unprecedented act of defiance towards Member States. She also clearly demonstrated how petty she was as a diplomat and as a person, not even having the class and elegance to stand up and hand over the honorary gavel to the Chair of the Executive Board. Until the very last minute of her term, Azoulay failed to rise to the level of a true head of a United Nations agency. It is clear that she will be missed by neither UNESCO staff nor Member States. “Bon débarras,” as they say in French. 

During this October session, the Executive Board also made another important decision that will prevent Azoulay and all her acolytes from sleeping as well as usual. Indeed, all appointments and promotions granted by Azoulay, which Inner City Press has widely reported on, will be reviewed by the UNESCO External Auditors. This is really bad news for Azoulay, who wanted to keep everything quiet, including all the illegal human resources measures taken by the acting Director of Human Resources, Paul Coustère of France, and the ADG for Management, Jennifer Linkins of the United States.

Now, both will have to face reality without Azoulay's protection and will come under pressure when the External Auditors start digging all the dirt and uncover the irregularities.  The decision by the Board reads as follows : “Requests that   the   External   Auditors   examine   all   aspects   of   the   post   reclassification, appointments and  promotion  of  staff  which  occurred  during  the  2024–2025 biennium and the anticipated impact thereof during the 2026–2027 biennium and present  the  results  in  a  separate  report  to  the  Executive  Board  no  later  than  its  225th session”. 

For the Frenchman Coustères, it is understandable why he is playing along with Azoulay until the end, but most observers do not understand how it is possible for an American citizen to bow down so much to Azoulay, even in the final minutes of her term. It is a mystery that only the future can solve.  The other rats will now begin to urgently abandon the sinking Azoulay ship.

The first to leave is Bernardin Assiene, Director of the IOS, who has already found another job with the United Nations agency in Rome. The next to rush to leave will probably be the Director of legal affairs, Santiago Villalpando, who spent his time lying to Member States during this session of the Council. He responded with a lie to almost every question he was asked. It is completely unprecedented to have such a low level of integrity when holding the position of legal advisor.

All of Santiago Villalpando's lies have been duly compiled and will be forwarded to the team of the newly elected Egyptian Director General.  Following the elections held on October 6 at UNESCO, we are now coming to the end of our coverage of the Azoulay administration. After more than 140 articles, the results achieved in the fight against corruption at the UN, and particularly at UNESCO, have led to concrete outcomes. 

As a result of our investigations, several ADGs have been dismissed: 

1) Frank La Rue (USA/Guatemala) (here about La Rue - this one before Guterres threw Inner City Press out of the UN.

La Rue's disgrace brought down with him the woman who defended his misdeeds and acts of sexual harassment, even though his case was indefensible: Rebecca Trott, ethics advisor at UNESCO, also lost her job and spent years complaining that the administration did not protect her, even though she was only playing the usual game of protecting the powerful within the Agency. 

2) Moez Chakchouk (Tunisia), dismissed for moral harassment, incompetence and professional misconduct. (here in 2020)

 3) ADG for (mis)management, Nicholas Jeffreys of the UK, dismissed for irregularly using public funds through contrary to the rules financial procedures. Here ) 

4) Two other ADGs in DG Azoulay's senior team were exposed in our articles and saw their chances of running for the position of DG completely ruined: Gabriela Ramos (Mexico), who was smarter and withdrew in time, and Edouard Firmin Matoko (Congo/Brazzaville), who went all the way to the end of the race only to be humiliated with two votes in his favor and 55 for the Egyptian candidate. The two countries that voted for Matoko were Congo, his father's country, and Vietnam, his mother's country. Unfortunately for him, no other members of his family had any influence on the voting states. (here about Matoko and Ramos ) 

5) One former DDG, Getachew Engida (Ethiopia) who was expecting a cushy position with DG Azoulay and who, to that end, had betrayed his backers in the previous administration, was also sent off back home after the publication of our article.   here about Engida)  Furthermore, several Directors were sacked as well. 

6) Magdalena Bona (Hungary) (here about her  )

  7) Nicolas Kassianides (France) (here about him  l)

 8) Director Human resources Hong Kwon (Korea)  here

9) Another Director HR Kazumi Ogawa (Japan) (here about Ogawa )  

This, and much more, has been achieved in recent years thanks to the exposure by Inner City Press of a number of cases of fraud and corruption at UNESCO. All this information is available on our website. This article concludes Inner City Press' coverage of matters related to DG Azoulay’s administration. We will continue to follow UNESCO with the same critical eye under the leadership of the newly elected DG, Khaled El-Enany of Egypt. He will take office in mid-November. 

Mr. El-Enany should bring back to UNESCO the concepts of integrity and respect for rules and procedures, smooth relations with Member States, and put an end to the management of the organization as if it were a private family business, as was the case under Audrey Azoulay. UNESCO stands today weakened and insignificant, ravaged by greed and financial misappropriations, propitious to the flourishing of abuse of power, corruption and nepotism. He is expected to change all that. Watch this site.

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

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