by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
UN GATE, April 13 – How corrupt is today's United Nations, under Antonio Guterres?
Well, consider UNRWA, under Philippe Lazzarini. Inner City Press for two days has asked Guterres' spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming -- the second day cc-ing Lazzarini himself - about complaints and evidence that whistleblowers have provided to Inner City Press about what is formally knowns as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
No response at all, while Dujarric laughs and services state media and his partners in censorship, with whom he worked to target and now ban Inner City Press.
And consider ESCWA, on which Guterres has refused to answer Press questions, now receiving (along with his equally censoring cronies) this from ESCWA staff:
From: ESCWA UNRWA Staff Data: April 11, 2023 Subject: Appeal from ESCWA Staff To: ag@un.org Cc: Lopez22@un.org, rola.dashti@un.org, makhmudov@un.org, pollardc@un.org, mounir.tabet@un.org, ndiyae@un.org, armstronge@un.org, courtenay.rattray@un.org, Noun@un.org, Ali.aldabag@un.org
Inner City Press in writing asked UN Spokespeople including Stephane Dujarric, Farhan Haq and Melissa Fleming for Guterres' response. Nothing. Now in August 2023 this yet fuller letter:
Dear Mathew, we the staff members of ESCWA have tried every venue possible to call upon the Secretary General to put an end to Rola Dashti's maladministration in vain. All internal machanisms have been manipulated to cover up for Dashti's corruption. We believe the Secretary General should assume his responsibility and react or simply leave! Staff can't bear anymore. We hope our appeal below reaches Guterres and member states.
To taint these complex corrupted practices, the contracts are subcontracted to other companies making significant commissions for Rola Dashti and Ahmad Dik who is still blackmailing Rola Dashti to keep quiet on her scandalous direct involvement in " honey contracts" of major projects and the arranged recruitment of her immediate relatives and connections. UN General Assembly and members of the UN Security Council should act instantly to preserve the falling ESCWA due to systematic and sponsored corruption under the direct responsibility of Rola Dashti. Member states have moral, legal and political responsibilities to hold Guterres, Rola Dashti, Catherine Pollard, and Martha Helena Lopez accountable for unprecedented corruption and maladministration at ESCWA. It is time for the Secretary General to intervene and bring justice to victims and those who were fired by Rola Dashti for reporting her and her right-hand Ahmad Dik who is still running ESCWA administration through his agents Hanadi Baltaji and Carla Ziadeh despite of his scandalous resignation after being charged with substantial sexual abuse and exploitation, corruption, and fraud cases. Member states must restore the millions of dollars Rola Dashti embezzled over the last four years and must reverse all unlawful recruitments of relatives and promotions Rola Dashti awarded in exchange of unlawful services she receives. Ahmad Dik is still in control of every aspect of ESCWA with the full support of Rola Dashti who is facilitating sexual exploitation by recruiting vulnerable women in exchange of "romantic favors" for Ahmad Dik. It is disgrace on every USG and ASG who allowed sexual assailant to resign after being implicated by an authorized OIOS investigation setting a shameful precedence to promote sexual abuse and exploitation in the UN. Rola Dashti's protuding implication in corruption and maladministration are being overlooked bluntly by Guterres!! Rola Dashti, according to official and media reports, is a symbolic corrupted figure in her home country and in the region. Guterres should be held personally and politically accountable for all scandalous misconducts committed by Rola Dashti since she took office in the UN.
Guterres should be held accountable for covering up for Rola Dashti and allowing her to belligerently abuse UN personnel and financial assets.His covering up for her misconducts have caused the UN unprecedented reputational and ethical damage, demoralization of staff significant waste of UN resources. Guterres and his senior officials manipulated and exploited all UN internal mechanisms to clear Rola Dashti from substantiated cases of corruption,fraud , obstruction of justice including audits and investigations as well as facilitating sexual exploitation and abuse. Rola Dashti utilized her official position to protect abusers and punishes victims and witnesses involved in duly authorized investigations into misconduct implicating her personally, Ahmad Dik, Hanadi Baltaji, and Carla Ziadeh. She recruited tens of close relatives in key positions to control budget and finance and more importantly procurement services to award major contracts to relatives from her mother side or contracts arranged by Ahmad Dik. According to victims of sexual abuse, Rola Dashti personally obstructed justice and mislead OIOS investigations, intimidated and threatened some of them and managed to "carrot" few of them and awarded them regular positions at ESCWA to silent them or drop their complaints against Ahmad Dik. victims of sexual abuses have recently spoke and revealed some of their painful journey at ESCWA starting from inviting them to apply for temporary positions, to an interview by a pimp in Human Resources Services who assesses them and then escorts them to Ahmad Dik's office for greet and meet and subcecuntly romantic settings. Rola Dashti invested in recruiting immediate cousins in budget and finance to taint complex unlawful transactions including tempering with umoja and other official records with the direct support of Hanadi Baltaji and Carla Ziadeh (both were general service staff who have been promoted to P4 in less than three years). Rola Dashti continues her efforts to manipulate staff selection regulation and working hard to promote both staff to Chief Budget and Chief of FAMSS to ensure her scandals remain in the dark. Those unlawful promotions and others are sightless on Rola Dashti embezzlement of UN funds including falsification of claims of entitlements, misconducts and obstruction of OIOS investigations and audits. Recently Rola Dashti ordered"verbally" the payment of USD 750000 upfront to an arranged contractor.
The total contract value is 2.8 million dollars to renovate glass panels. The shopping card and actual payment to the contractor were actioned in less than 24 hours. As an immediate incentive for implicated staff in this unlawful abuse of UN financial resources, Rola Dashti ordered special post allowances for Hanadi Baltaji, Carla Ziadeh and Ferial Rahhal OiC procurement. Rola Dashti personally arranged for a contract to replace power generators although power generators of the building are the responsibility of the building owner. Procurement regulations were manipulated and "honey contract" of USD 1.5 million was awarded in a suspicious and smelly manner to a connection with Ahmad Dik. The capacity of the power generators was tripled to increase cost and therefore multiply commissions for those involved within and outside ESCWA in this corrupted activity. The output of the new generators is good enough to supply the entire Beirut downtown with electricity. A less than a year after the new generators were installed an additional costs of USD 400000 was paid for the contractor for unforeseen amendments of the original contract, one of the generators appeared to have been a second hand and was repainted and was sold to ESCWA as a brand new. Currently and after Rola Dashti has spent almost USD 2 millions, ESCWA staff have to work without any sort of Air-conditioning in an excessive heat and in a polluted work environment putting the health and wellbeing of more than 800 staff at imminent risk. To sustain a corrupted work environment at ESCWA and to ensure her scandals remain unnoticed, Rola Dashti selected another Lebanese as her deputy for operational support. The deal for the selection of this D-2 position was facilitated by Ahmad Dik. The failed selection was an another attempt by Rola Dashti to foster a corrupted culture at the workplace. The would be incumbent comes from the same school of Rola Dashti where both aspire to turn ESCWA to family business run by immediate family members to cover up for profound corruption. Rola Dashti hires individuals with proven history of corruption and wrong doings as her close cycle to downfall the values of the United Nations aiming at a long term control on ESCWA resources and it's regional strategic influence. Rola Dashti monitors official email accounts of opponent staff members including their official telephone call logs. Rola Dashti, prior to her appointment as ESCWA head, was ousted from government and parliamentary committees over charges of corruption, maladministration, abuse of authority, obstruction of justice and suppression of opinion of opponents, while serving as a minister of planning and development in Kuwait. She awarded the famous 50 million Kuwaiti dinar(163 million USD) calcined coal contract to national company Rola Dashti herself was one of it's board directors. she was also charged with other wrong doings:
1. Rola Dashti benefited from the calcined coal project, after she took a loan as a minister of planning and development of fifty million dinar and interest 1% , being a member of the company board of directors.
2. Rola Dashti was credited with several recommendations sent to the competent authorities, including set of methods to be developed to suppress opponents of her authority, amounting to deprivation from leadership positions, dismissal from the job, and others.
3. Suspicious recruitments of advisors to control financial and contracting processes.
4. Deliberately carried out actions that contradict it's commitment to human development and administrative reform. this has been evident in it's practice of an arbitrary, vindictive and differentiated approach represented in suppressing experienced national competencies, suppressing freedom and rights of employees, supervisors and leaders, taking retaliatory and personal measures and marginalizing them through the abuse of her authority. she illegally prosecuted opponents for their technical, legal or administrative opinion they express in opposition to her erroneous and corrupted conduct. Rola Dashti imposed all those Malpractices on ESCWA where corruption of all kinds become the norm of ESCWA work. Rola Dashti obstructed UN justice not to address a systematic sexual abuse cases implicating her right hand Ahmad Dik. she awarded long term contracts to victims and witnesses who agreed to mislead OIOS investigations or for some to withdraw their complaints. concurrently she fired a main victim of sexual abuse who fully cooperated with OIOS investigation. "Coincidentally" the same victim escaped a fatal hit and run accident. Rola Dashti has no hesitation to eliminate morally and physically, any opponent of her maladministration. Rola Dashti have asked some ambassadors of ESCWA member states and a head of Lebanese security authority to "deal" with some of her opponents by fabricating "state security charges" to get rid of them. Rola Dashti with the direct supervision of one of her aunt's employed as " a specialist" deployed massive ESCWA resources to distribute humanitarian aids to supposedly needy Lebanese people donated by an ESCWA member state. to make this "ESCWA story" short, the bulk of those donations ended up in Rola Dashti's an immediate relatives warehouse in Damour area south of Beirut. to taint the embezzlement of significant donations, Rola Dashti authorized her circle of relatives and aids to generate fake lists of beneficiaries, and to cover up these operations she awarded each of them 30 humanitarian aid boxes. ESCWA has no mandate or any regularity to engage in any humanitarian work. Rola Dashti utilized UN regular budget and resources, manipulated ESCWA mandate to personally benefit from those donations. Rola Dashti is incompetent USG and failed to carry out duties and responsibilities as head of UN regional commission. despite of all the damage she caused to the UN and SG, she is still determined to continue her wrong doings and promote corruption at all levels. her unjustifiable intensive travels and abuse of travel regulations have caused a serious financial damage to the UN. she spends more than 80% of her official duty on official travel. Rola Dashti is the most expensive USG in the entire UN system and has become a burden on ESCWA programme budget. she also misuses her authority by inviting relatives to ESCWA conferences to pay them flight tickets and DSA, a list of those relatives is being circulated publicly. Rola Dashti vigorously abuses financial, administrative, procurement and human resources regulations. the more reports into her wrongdoing reaches Guterres desk the more offensive and aggressive she reacts against potential opponents. if she suspects that a staff member engaged in OIOS, ethics office, or other internal investigations mechanisms and the staff did not instantly inform her the contents of the engagement, the staff member would be humiliated, intimidated in some cases fired and in most cases blacklisted.
Rola Dashti promotes corruption and immorality particularly sexual exploitation and abuse. She not only turns blind eye on serious sexual abuse cases , she awards abusers and bring them closer to her management to use them in her corrupted work by blackmailing them. Rola Dashti although is paid the highest post adjustment in the UN system, she misused UN funds and installed solar power system at her own personal house costing the UN$50000 not to pay for her personal power consumption, similar to more than 300 staff members stationed in Lebanon. she paid herself a lump sum for alleged damage to her accommodations in the aftermath of Beirut port explosion. all supporting documents she submitted along with the claim were arranged and falsified by Hanadi Baltaji and Carla Ziadeh. Rola Dashti promotes state of fear and intimidation among staff. she misleads and tempers with evidence to obstruct OIOS investigation with the help of Hanadi Baltaji and Carla Ziadeh including tempering with official records and transactions. The ongoing grievances reported by ESCWA staff have been overlooked by Guterres and his aids. Rola Dashti should be brought before international justice for charges of maladministration corruption and violation of human rights by suppressing hundreds of UN staff who denounces and compacted corruption at ESCWA. The General Assemble and Security Council should react to the situation at ESCWA.
Rola Dashti promotes corruption and immorality particularly sexual exploitation and abuse. She not only turns blind eye on serious sexual abuse cases , she awards abusers and bring them closer to her management to use them in her corrupted work by blackmailing them. Rola Dashti although is paid the highest post adjustment in the UN system, she misused UN funds and installed solar power system at her own personal house costing the UN$50000 not to pay for her personal power consumption, similar to more than 300 staff members stationed in Lebanon. she paid herself a lump sum for alleged damage to her accommodations in the aftermath of Beirut port explosion. all supporting documents she submitted along with the claim were arranged and falsified by Hanadi Baltaji and Carla Ziadeh. Rola Dashti promotes state of fear and intimidation among staff. she misleads and tempers with evidence to obstruct OIOS investigation with the help of Hanadi Baltaji and Carla Ziadeh including tempering with official records and transactions. The ongoing grievances reported by ESCWA staff have been overlooked by Guterres and his aids. Rola Dashti should be brought before international justice for charges of maladministration corruption and violation of human rights by suppressing hundreds of UN staff who denounces and compacted corruption at ESCWA. The General Assemble and Security Council should react to the situation at ESCWA.
Sincerely,
Active ESCWA staff who wish to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
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