By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, October 10 – With UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres praising the UN Office of South South Cooperation so recently exposed as a bribery vehicle in the Ng Lap Seng - President of the UN General Assembly John Ashe corruption prosecution, and banning from the entire UN Inner City Press which exposes it, now a new exclusive report: after the scandal involving an August 2015 conference in Macau, the annual United Nations Global South-South Development Expo (this year’s is slated for 28 November in New York) co-sponsored by the recently convicted Chinese Billionaire’s Sun-Kian Group and UNDP where participants including U.N. staff members received iPads worth $599 from the organizers, an eerily similar scheme seems to have unfolded in the Office of South-South Cooperation. Documents (enclosed) reveal a transactiondated 23 August 2018 between the Chair of the Group of 77 and UNDP via UNOSSC involving multiple units of office equipment including desktops, projectors, monitors,shredders and keyboards worth thousands of dollars.
The agreement between frequently flying Directors Mourad Wahba, UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States and Jorge Chediek, Office of South South Cooperation, claims to fund activities implemented by OSSC in support of G77. In reality, this is another instance where Senior UN officials like Mr. Wahba use the Office of South-South Cooperation as a vehicle to hide their conflict of interest by funneling $100,000 to his country, Egypt. Wahba’s office specifically insisted for there to be no record of this transaction directly traced to his Bureau. Instead, RBAS would release the funds directly to OSSC, bypassing the “support to G77” factor in the equation. OSSC in turn frames this transaction as a loan.
UN officials like OSSC’s Mr. Chediek have developed an influence peddling racket where tax payers dollars designated for poverty eradication initiatives are diverted to buy favors with the G77 which Egypt has been chairing.
The agreement between frequently flying Directors Mourad Wahba, UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States and Jorge Chediek, Office of South South Cooperation, claims to fund activities implemented by OSSC in support of G77. In reality, this is another instance where Senior UN officials like Mr. Wahba use the Office of South-South Cooperation as a vehicle to hide their conflict of interest by funneling $100,000 to his country, Egypt. Wahba’s office specifically insisted for there to be no record of this transaction directly traced to his Bureau. Instead, RBAS would release the funds directly to OSSC, bypassing the “support to G77” factor in the equation. OSSC in turn frames this transaction as a loan.
UN officials like OSSC’s Mr. Chediek have developed an influence peddling racket where tax payers dollars designated for poverty eradication initiatives are diverted to buy favors with the G77 which Egypt has been chairing.
Such influence peddling, particularly from individuals withties to the G77, seems to be Mr. Chediek’s modus operandi. Just last year, his office spent over $160,000 to hire two Senior Advisors to work for the Chair of the Group of 77. This year, in addition to supplying equipment to the Permanent Mission of Egypt, documents here on Patreon, Mr. Chediek also used his office’s protected UNDP allocation to pay over $30,000 salary for the G77 Chair’s secretary.
Subsequently, Mr. Chediek has bragged to many about his influence over the G77 and how his budget will beprotected due to his favors for the G77, evident in the procurement of this equipment and recruitment of staff for G77 Chair. OSSC evades the scrutiny and accountability needed to ensure UNDP’s generous contributions are committed to actual development initiatives, and not used to further the career and interest of people like its Director, Mr. Chediek.
The Executive Board of UNDP, the Organization’s primary oversight body has the responsibility of ensuring that all resources committed for development initiatives are not diverted for frivolous purposes. Achim Steiner, UNDP’s Administrator must be held accountable for the corruption and waste in OSSC and RBAS.
Was recruiting staff and purchasing equipment what the Executive Board had in mind when it allocated $3.5 million to OSSC? We ask questions but they are not answered. Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric has taken to blocking Inner City Press which reports on UN and Guterres' use of funds on Twitter. Here now an exclusive interim report on UN OSSC, even as Guterres banned Inner City Press from its press conference and the UN as a whole for 91 days and counting:
Was recruiting staff and purchasing equipment what the Executive Board had in mind when it allocated $3.5 million to OSSC? We ask questions but they are not answered. Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric has taken to blocking Inner City Press which reports on UN and Guterres' use of funds on Twitter. Here now an exclusive interim report on UN OSSC, even as Guterres banned Inner City Press from its press conference and the UN as a whole for 91 days and counting:
As recession looms in Argentina, its Central Bank raising its interest rates substantially in the past month and after the country announced it was turning to the IMF for a bailout, the government is set to spend millions of borrowed dollars on a wasteful UN conference on South-South Cooperation slated for March 2019 in Buenos Aires, to spend millions on an Office led by director Jorge Chediek whos aim OSSC sources say is to use this conference to advance to UN Assistant Secretary General level. His tenure at the Office thus far has involved a spate of self promotional travel while signing off on dubious Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) for projects that are only tangentially related to actual South-South development.
The MoU signings are often documented on the Facebook pageof Mr. Chediek, where he brags about the support from Guterres, who has refused to audit the next UN corruption scandal involving Patrick Ho the China Energy Fund Committee and had Inner City Press which reports on it roughed up and banned from the UN.
The MoU signings are often documented on the Facebook pageof Mr. Chediek, where he brags about the support from Guterres, who has refused to audit the next UN corruption scandal involving Patrick Ho the China Energy Fund Committee and had Inner City Press which reports on it roughed up and banned from the UN.
Its collaboration with Yingke Group, started initially when current UNOSSC Deputy Direcor Grace Wang, a Chinese national, worked at BPPS. When she commenced her role at UNOSSC, this relationship traveled with her. This Yingke Group -UNOSSC collaboration is covered in a 30 May 2018 article entitled UNOSSC delegation discusses South-South collaboration with Yingke Group where it claims this collaboration "is designed to be one pillar of the South-South Cooperation Poverty Eradication Facility,aiming to utilize tourism as an instrument for poverty alleviation through improving infrastructure, generating local employment, increasing local income, and developing local capacities." But what is behind these buzzwords?
The large number of Mo Us also attest to the frequency of wasteful travelby Mr. Chediek. While million of Argentinians are subjected to austerity, the Government of President Macri has decided to invest millions in the ambitions of one man, Mr. Chediek. In addition to the Chinese nepotism, Mr. Chediek seems to have his own questionable connections. Recently, OSSC sources complain, he hired an Argentinian national for a senior peace-building post and one whose brother is the founder and executive director of Brandling Latin America, a London based PR firm with royal connections through the company's senior director Lady Gabriella Windsor?
The Office continues to operate in highly questionable ways, giving rise to these questions: 'This Office of South South Cooperation is nested under UNDP, and provided with $25 million in core money from the UNDP budget. This budget is currently protected from any change in UNDP's financial situation. It should be noted that the budgets of the other UNDP-funded organizations, UN Volunteers and UNCDF - which had their strategic frameworks approved by this Board, and whose monitoring and evaluation frameworks are clear - are not protected. So... I) When will the Office's budget, monitoring and evaluation and results be reported to the [UNDP Executive] Board, and will this be for decision? 2) Will the Office start producing an annual report again, and when will this be available to the Board? 3) How is the Office working with UNDP's evaluation and audit offices? 4) Where will the Office's results be reported and collated? 5) How does the Office comply with UNDP's transparency requirements? We also note the Office's fundraising activities, and the very generous investments totaling $150 million this year by the Government of India.
We'll have more on Guterres and this Office, in India and beyond. Amid record unemployment rates and long soup kitchen queues is BAPA+40 really a priority item for the Government of Argentina? What is happening to the UN under Guterres, and his spokesman Dujarric who blocks and bans the Press? Watch this site.
