By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 23 -- Even on a topic as serious as HIV / AIDS, the United Nations has become a sinkhole of patronage jobs, without accountability.
Inner City Press has previously covered not only the failure of, but corruption in, the so called "MassiveGood" UNITAIDS fundraising program run by Philippe Douste-Blazy who spent over $500,000 for a 60 second video ad featuring Spike Lee and former US President Bill Clinton.Click here for first exclusive story, here for first follow-up.
But just before this AIDS 2012 conference, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, July 20 doled out another UN envoy position, that on HIV / AIDS for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, giving it to Michel Kazatchkine of France.
UNmentioned in Ban's four-paragraph appointment was the fact that Kazatchkine left the Global Fund earlier this year amid a management and even corruption scandal in Mauritania, Zimbabwe and Mali then probed by former Botswana President Festus Mogae former US HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt. French magazine Marianne pushed the scandal into fundraising by Carla Bruno-Sarkozy, click here for that
The Fund had to stop making grants and appoint a different General Manager, Santander banker Gabriel Jaramillo, amid calls for Kazatchkine to resign and be held accountable.
Now a few months later he has a new post with the UN. And last week at UN headquarters in New York, France held another pitching event for UNITAIDS in Conference Room 5 of the North Lawn building, with not even the cursory acknowledgment of missing all of MassiveGood's promised fundraising targets that Inner City Press receives in response to questions in the UN briefing room, from UN envoy Ray Chambers and others.
How UNaccountable can this UN become? The Friday before, on July 13, Ban doled out other such posts, including one on AIDS, another on "Global Education" to Gordon Brown. What's next? Watch this site.
