Exclusive: Amid ACLU Legal Action, UN Staff Were Blocked, UN Quiet, Guterres Email Here

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, January 30 – Many hours after the American Civil Liberties Union legal action and injunction, what explains the near-total silence from UN officials?  Some say a desire to avoid UN funding cuts; others more realistically see personal desire not to lose well-paid jobs. 

  But over the weekend, UN staff were banned from getting on planes to the UN. While the UN's holdover spokesman Stephane Dujarric provided little information, and only when pressed, Inner City Press is exclusively publishing this, from Secretary General Antonio Gutteres to staff:

"Dear colleagues, I have been following closely the developments regarding the recent Executive Order on immigration which was issued by the US administration last Friday.

As you know, the order prohibits entry of nationals from certain countries to the United States.

I am writing to inform you that we have been in close touch with the United States Mission to the United Nations throughout the weekend, and have received reassurances that the order should not impact UN Staff and their families who are entering the United States using their G4 visas.

The US Mission has offered to assist if any issues are encountered by UN Staff and their families upon trying to travel to or enter the United States.

Staff should keep in mind that there are likely to be delays at airports across the globe over the coming days as US Customs and Border Protection implements its new procedures. Please do take this into account when making travel plans.

Best regards,

Secretary-General António Guterres"

  What about the staff blocked from planes?

But where is the UN communications guidance (or 2017 propaganda plan by Under Secretary General Cristina Gallach) in all this?

  Nowhere. Intentionally so. 

 The communications chief of the UN, already named by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services as having done no due diligence on Ng Lap Seng, the defendant in the first of two UN bribery cases, promulgated a self-serving rah-rah trying to promote herself, not the Organization. Her CYA made an A of the UN.

Long after the injunction, the UN response was three mid-level (ASG, Special Adviser and holdover spokesman) re-tweets, coy like the self-serving Gallach (UNless going Dutch).

   While in some place the UN is doing good work, the worst of the organization is exemplified in its Department of Public Information, particularly as regards planning to mislead the public in 2017 about such issues has peacekeepers' rapes and bringing deadly cholera to Haiti. 

See UN Plan, exclusively put online here.

   UN Peacekeeping needs radical reform, and UN DPI under Cristina Gallach needs to be disbanded. 

  Gallach produced a propaganda plan for 2017, which multiple outraged UN sources leaked to Inner City Press.  Gallach's "2017 Communications Guidance" has a paragraph on cholera in Haiti which does not mention that the UN brought the disease to the island. Page 9.

  While barely a million dollars, nearly all of it blood money from Ban Ki-moon's South Korea, has been raised, Gallach tells her propaganda troops to "promote the UN's efforts to combat the disease harnessing.. social media tools." 

  This is propaganda. 

 Likewise on sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, Gallach's rah-rah implies that the corner has been turned. Page 5. While the UN's billion dollar DR Congo mission is a mere footnote, the UN's failed envoy on Yemen is portrayed as successful on Page 6. The section on the Middle East , and pages 10 and 14-15, are designed to trigger budget cuts.

UN's "2017 Communications Guidance," Here, Is Propaganda Plan of Cristina Gallach, Who Should Be Fired by Matthew Russell Lee on Scribd

 It is Gallach who should be fired.

  As the UN remains unreformed after Ban Ki-moon's ten years ended with corruption, long asked about by the Press, exposed, budget cuts are coming.

 In Washington executive orders are being prepared to cut up to 40% of the US' contributions to the UN, and to fully cut funding to entities blamed for violation of human rights.

  Inner City Press has put that draft EO online here.

  One obvious question is whether the total denial of due process for whistleblowers - already part of US law - and investigative press which covers UN corruption constitutes such a violation.

  For example, the UN Department of Public Information under Cristina Gallach in early 2016 threw Inner City Press out of the UN, dumping its investigative files onto First Avenue, without a single hearing or opportunity to be heard, and no appeal since. 

All this for seeking to cover an event in the UN Press Briefing Room which was nowhere listed as closed, and leaving as soon as a single UN Security officer said the Spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, wanted Inner City Press out.

Gallach had a conflict of interest, having been asked by Inner City Press about her own links with Macau-based businessman Ng Lap Seng, facing trial (like Ban Ki-moon's nephew and brother) on bribery charges.

There are no rules, only the one-person fiat rule of an official dumped on Ban's UN by Spain, where she had previously managed, at most, seven people as spokesperson to Javier Solana. Nothing has been done; eleven months later Gallach still requires Inner City Press to have "minders" to cover the UN Security Council. 

  The cuts, and a new US Ambassador, are coming. Six days after a confirmation hearing in which she called for accountability at the UN, including for peacekeepers' abuses, Nikki Haley on January 24 was confirmed to replace Samantha Power as US Ambassador to the UN.

  This came after at least two business days of no photos replacing those of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the US Mission to the UN. 

  On January 24, Inner City Press asked former UN official, now Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom about Haley's call to defund countries whose peacekeepers abuse. Tweeted video here. There are reforms needed at the UN.

  Back on January 18 before Haley spoke as nominee for US Ambassador to the UN, Senator Bob Corker said he sometimes wondered if just-left Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had a pulse.

  In fact, Ban was quite active in helping his own relatives at the UN, promoting his son in law to the top UN job in Kenya, his brother mining in Myanmar with a "UN delegation," indicted nephew using Ban's name to sell real estate.

  When Haley began, she said the UN has a "checkered history." That's being diplomatic. Consider a head of Peacekeeping who has linked rapes to R&R, video here.

  Consider a head of the UN "Department of Public Information" who did no due diligence over indicted UN briber Ng Lap Seng - then evicted and still restricts the Press which asked here about it. Audit here, Para 37-40, 20b; NYT here.

   In response to questions, Haley praised the UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, questioned the one in South Sudan and that country's government. She noted that countries make money off their peacekeepers. The case in point, we note, is Burundi, here.

UN Guterres Cleans Up One of Ban's Kenya Miscues, Son in Law Remains Lobbying With Public Funds?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 29 – Kenyan troops will return to South Sudan, as new UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres cleaned up one of his predecessor Ban Ki-moon's messes. Others remain.

  From the African Union summit in Addis Ababa it was relatedly "agreed that Kenya would take up command of the peace keeping forces in Darfur, according to Kenyan State House Spokesperson Manoah Esipisu who said, 'the UN has offered Kenya the command for the forces in Darfur.'"

  In South Sudan, the UN judged the Terrain Apartments in Juba, South Sudan to be safe and well-protected in October 2015, documents obtained and exclusively published by Inner City Press show. 

This incompetence, well before the Kenyan force commander Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki took over UNMISS in 2016, contributed to the rapes and death scandal for which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon fired, or scapegoated, Ondieki on November 1, leading to Kenya's pullout. Here was Ban on November 4, complaining at the push-back, Vine video. 

On November 10, Ban's head of peacekeeping Herve Ladsous refused to answer on either Juba or Yambio, see below and video here: Ladsous only said, “You know I do not speak to you, Mister.” Ladsous remains, but must go, as must Cristina Gallach, who not only evictedand restricts the Press with no due process or appeal, but produced this, exclusively published by Inner City Press.

  Meanwhile now the UN's Resident Coordinator for Kenya, Ban Ki-moon's son in law Siddharth Chatterjee who was promoted by Ban himself, without recusal, in August 2016 has, according to whistleblowing UN staff, prepared to go to Addis with the purpose repaying a personal debt by lobbying for Kenya's foreign minister to get the AU's top diplomatic job. The staff say this is both an inappropriate act for a UN Resident Coordinator, and a misuse of taxpayer money. We'll have more on this.

  (UN holdover spokesman Stephane Dujarric on January 27, when Inner City Press asked a well-founded question about UN use of public funds, called it "despicable," video here.)

  The conflicts of interest today's UN allows by its senior staff, while censoring both lower level staff and the Press which asks, are exemplified by the case in Kenya of Roselyn Kwamboka Akombe.

   Roselyn Kwamboka Akombe is a senior staff member in the UN Department of Political Affairs. She is being allowed to take a leave of absence to be a member of Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. (In Kenya, of course, just left Secretary General Ban Ki-moon named his own son in law Siddharth Chatterjee to the top UN job.)

  But she was quoted, in Kenya, that she will "use her 15 years of experience at the UN to persuade diplomatic missions in the country." So much for the directive to lower UN staff not to use the name of the UN. 

On January 23, Inner City Press asked the UN's holdover spokesman Stephane Dujarric, video here, UN transcript here: 

Inner City Press: I wanted to ask you about a case that's arisen in DPA [Department of Political Affairs].  And it's a case of P5 staff member Roselyn Kwamboka Akombe has apparently been put… given leave to put on a… the Kenyan Electoral Commission.  But, she's also been quoted as saying she'll use her 15 years of UN experience to persuade diplomatic missions in the country to… to not get involved in the Kenyan policy.  So, people in DPA… and it looked… just objectively, this seems to be a violation of the policy.  This seems to be a use of one's UN status to be involved in the politics of a country.  Can you… can you get an answer on how this is acceptable?

Spokesman:  No, she has been granted special leave without pay to serve in the Kenyan Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.  She'll provide technical electoral support to the Commission in preparation for the 2017 elections and support efforts to prevent post-electoral violence in Kenya.  The activity was approved in accordance with staff regulations… the proper staff regulations and staff rules.

Inner City Press:  But, how can it be problematic for a staff member on a Saturday to go on a… the Women's March and this is… she's made… she actually has relatives involved in the political frame…?

Spokesman:  You know, I… I don't… you probably know more about this staff member's personal history.  The fact is she was asked for… she asked for special leave without pay.  It was granted.  It was obviously looked at and authorized.  And the… as I've said just a few minutes ago, the message from the Ethics Office was just a reminder of people's obligations as international civil servants.  It was not meant to deter people from attending the march. 

  UN system officials told their staff not to attend the "Global Women's March" on Saturday, January 21. From the NYC march, Periscope I and II, photos here, here and here.

  Yet while telling lower level staff to avoid any appearance of politics, not only are Under Secretary Generals like Cristina Gallach currently allowed to flout the same rules - now multiple whistleblowers have complained to Inner City Press about the case of Roselyn Akombe. Just as three UN spokespeople did not answer Inner City Press' request for comment and clarification on the UN Ethics Office's unsigned ban on staff participating in the January 21 Women's March. 

  Meanwhile, USG Gallach pseudo-coyly uses Twitter to virtue-signal against reported policies of the new Administration, while other staff are banned. These are double standards. We'll have more on this.

After Inner City Press asked, initially the anti-March directive was reversed - then reinstated at 6 pm the night before the march. Below is UN email first published by Inner City Press. Meanwhile senior UN officials like Under Secretary General Cristina Gallach violate the stated UN rules. Below is an email from the UN World Food Program.

  After Inner City Press published and Periscoped about it and asked four WFP spokespeople about it, by email and phone, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq at the January 20 noon briefing answered Inner City Press that WFP's Ertharin Cousin, from Chicago, reversed her agency's Ethics Officer and said staff can march. YouTube video here.

But then just before 6 pm on January 20, the eve of the March, another UN "Broadcast" email went out, further muddying the waters before the Women's March and showing again that Cristina Gallach (and some other USGs) have violated the UN's rules. That email is below; here are the questions Inner City Press has submitted to the UN's top three spokespeople for clarification:

"These are two Press questions asked before the Women's March (in DC, and in front of the UN, as well as elsewhere) starts, in light of the unsigned, unclear Ethics Office broadcast email below sent out yesterday evening after, and contradicting, the answer given to my question at the noon briefing about the UN's position on the March.

Given that, and many questions Inner City Press has received from confused (and angry) UN staff - and the unprecedented request for the extradition of the just-former Secretary General's brother - these questions should be responded to immediately:

Who is responsible for the Ethics Office broadcast email below? Is Elia Armstrong still the head of / involved in the Ethics Office?

Why is it unsigned? Who is accountable for it? Was it cleared with the Office of Legal Affairs? Are there two different instructions for Secretariat staff and Ertharin Cousin's WFP staff?

Separately, please comment on the US government formal request to South Korea to extradite Ban Ki Sang, and again, was the UN ever contacted by prosecutors about Ban Ki-moon or his family members?

   There are still the majority of the questions below [only two and a half of 22 have been answered.] On deadline." Watch this site.

 The UN's 6 pm, January 20 email:

"To: OAH, DPKO, UN Funds Programs & Tribunals, HQ NY Secretariat
From: BROADCAST-UNHQ/NY/UNO
Date: 01/20/2017 05:57PM
Subject: Message from the Ethics Office: Public Pronouncements and Political Activities

Recently, there have been a number of questions regarding public pronouncements including participating in political activities and social media discussions.  The questions include participation in tomorrow’s Women’s March on Washington. Are such activities in line with our status as international civil servants? 

In this respect, we would like to remind staff of their obligations as international civil servants.

The private activities of UN staff members must remain within the limits of the Organization’s core values as reflected in Staff Regulation 1.2 and Staff Rule 1.2.  While the Organization respects the inviolability of your personal views and convictions, including your political and religious convictions, as well as your right to freedom of expression, we must ensure that the expression of those views and convictions do not adversely reflect on our status, or on the integrity, independence and impartiality that are required by that status.

As international civil servants, we are called upon to uphold and respect the principles set out in the Charter, including faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women.  Nonetheless, as international civil servants, our Standards of Conduct (para 9 and 33) make clear that we do not have the freedom of private persons to take sides or to express our beliefs publicly on sensitive political matters, either individually or as members of a group nor can we criticize or try to discredit a Government.

Public pronouncements, which could have an impact on our independence and impartiality as international civil servants, come in many forms including but not limited to:

-marches, protests, demonstrations;
-online petitions:
-social media activity:
-group walks/activities.

Accordingly, participating in certain activities, especially those with political overtones, may be viewed as incompatible with our status as international civil servants."

 Haq would not answer if UN Under Secretaries General on Samantha Power's election night "party" complied with the impartiality even Cousins claimed. We'll have more on this.

Here's WFP's email:

From: Catherine COLMAY [at] wfp.org on behalf of Bonnie GREEN
Date: Thursday 19 January 2017 at 16:36
Subject: Guidance on Public Political Activities

Message addressed in bcc to All HQ Staff
On behalf of Bonnie Green, Director, Ethics Office

Dear HQ Colleagues,

I am writing about the Women’s March in Rome, scheduled for this Saturday, the 21st January 2017, and our obligations as employees of an international civil organization.

Although the Women’s March in Rome has many goals including respect for civil rights, the March in Rome is part of the “Global Women’s March” conceived as a reaction to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and is intended “…to send a bold message to the new US administration on their first day in office.” [As per Women’s March in Rome Facebook page and other collateral.] 

Whereas our personal political convictions remain inviolate, while we work for WFP, we do not have the freedom of private persons to take sides or express personal political views publicly, either individually or as members of a group. As such, it is not appropriate for us to participate in the Women’s March in Rome or any of the marches as part of the “Global Women’s March”.

The Standards of Conduct for the international Civil Service may be accessed in English,French, Spanish and Arabic, and feel free to pass by the Ethics Office (1Y08) for hard copies in any of the languages.  

As always, the Ethics Office is available to you for additional guidance in person or at WFP.ETHICS [at] wfp.org.

Regards,
Bonnie E. Green
Director and Chief Ethics Officer
Ethics Office
World Food Programme

   While there is much to be said about this, what is clear to Inner City Press is that this eleventh hour face- (or funding-) saving attempt exposes again the double standards at work in the UN.

  While UN system line staff are told not to participate in this Women's March on a Saturday, UN Under Secretary General for Public Information Cristina Gallach proudly retweeted of outgoing US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power's UN-heavy "election night party."

  Gallach also, among other things, highlighted the critique of Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson reportedly considering not having a traveling press corps. But Ban Ki-moon, who as UN Secretary General, hired Gallach to communicate for him, did not have a traveling press corp, and rarely held press conferences.

  This same Cristina Gallach had her Department of Public Information use public funds to pay a trainer to tell non-governmental groups accredited to the UN that Detroit, Michigan is a third rate city" in "flyover country," here.

  This while Gallach used public money to travel to her native Barcelona to receive a personal award, and refused to answer or explain about it.

  As to the UN's comment on any of this, now Ban's holdover spokesman at the UN, Stephane Dujarric, has answered only two and a half of 22 questions Inner City Press submitted, and that on a delay. Whatever is provided now will be published.

 In full disclosure Cristina Gallach is also the UN official who, as Inner City Press inquiredinto her and now-gone UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's connections to the corruption scandals surrounding the UN - the John Ashe / Ng Lap Seng bribery case (Gallach did no due diligence, UN audit at Para 37-40 and 20b), and now the indictments against Ban Ki-moon's brother and nephew, who worked for the UN's landlord Colliers International - evicted Inner City Press without any due process, and restricts it still, with no right to appeal. 

We'll have more on this.

After ACLU Legal Action, UN's 2017 Propaganda Plan Leaves UN Officials Silent, Gallach Put the A in CYA

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 29 – Hours after the American Civil Liberties Union legal actionand injunction, what explains the near-total silence from UN officials?  Some say a desire to avoid UN funding cuts; others more realistically see personal desire not to lose well-paid jobs. 

But where is the UN communications guidance (or 2017 propaganda plan by Under Secretary General Cristina Gallach) in all this?

  Nowhere. Intentionally so. 

 The communications chief of the UN, already named by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services as having done no due diligence on Ng Lap Seng, the defendant in the first of two UN bribery cases, promulgated a self-serving rah-rah trying to promote herself, not the Organization. Her CYA made an A of the UN.

Long after the injunction, the UN response was three mid-level (ASG, Special Adviser and holdover spokesman) re-tweets, coy like the self-serving Gallach.

   While in some place the UN is doing good work, the worst of the organization is exemplified in its Department of Public Information, particularly as regards planning to mislead the public in 2017 about such issues has peacekeepers' rapes and bringing deadly cholera to Haiti. 

See UN Plan, exclusively put online here.

   UN Peacekeeping needs radical reform, and UN DPI under Cristina Gallach needs to be disbanded. 

  Gallach produced a propaganda plan for 2017, which multiple outraged UN sources leaked to Inner City Press.  Gallach's "2017 Communications Guidance" has a paragraph on cholera in Haiti which does not mention that the UN brought the disease to the island. Page 9.

  While barely a million dollars, nearly all of it blood money from Ban Ki-moon's South Korea, has been raised, Gallach tells her propaganda troops to "promote the UN's efforts to combat the disease harnessing.. social media tools." 

  This is propaganda. 

 Likewise on sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, Gallach's rah-rah implies that the corner has been turned. Page 5. While the UN's billion dollar DR Congo mission is a mere footnote, the UN's failed envoy on Yemen is portrayed as successful on Page 6. The section on the Middle East , and pages 10 and 14-15, are designed to trigger budget cuts.

UN's "2017 Communications Guidance," Here, Is Propaganda Plan of Cristina Gallach, Who Should Be Fired by Matthew Russell Lee on Scribd

 It is Gallach who should be fired.

  As the UN remains unreformed after Ban Ki-moon's ten years ended with corruption, long asked about by the Press, exposed, budget cuts are coming.

 In Washington executive orders are being prepared to cut up to 40% of the US' contributions to the UN, and to fully cut funding to entities blamed for violation of human rights.

  Inner City Press has put that draft EO online here.

  One obvious question is whether the total denial of due process for whistleblowers - already part of US law - and investigative press which covers UN corruption constitutes such a violation.

  For example, the UN Department of Public Information under Cristina Gallach in early 2016 threw Inner City Press out of the UN, dumping its investigative files onto First Avenue, without a single hearing or opportunity to be heard, and no appeal since. 

All this for seeking to cover an event in the UN Press Briefing Room which was nowhere listed as closed, and leaving as soon as a single UN Security officer said the Spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, wanted Inner City Press out.

Gallach had a conflict of interest, having been asked by Inner City Press about her own links with Macau-based businessman Ng Lap Seng, facing trial (like Ban Ki-moon's nephew and brother) on bribery charges.

There are no rules, only the one-person fiat rule of an official dumped on Ban's UN by Spain, where she had previously managed, at most, seven people as spokesperson to Javier Solana. Nothing has been done; eleven months later Gallach still requires Inner City Press to have "minders" to cover the UN Security Council. 

  The cuts, and a new US Ambassador, are coming. Six days after a confirmation hearing in which she called for accountability at the UN, including for peacekeepers' abuses, Nikki Haley on January 24 was confirmed to replace Samantha Power as US Ambassador to the UN.

  This came after at least two business days of no photos replacing those of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the US Mission to the UN. 

  On January 24, Inner City Press asked former UN official, now Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom about Haley's call to defund countries whose peacekeepers abuse. Tweeted video here. There are reforms needed at the UN.

  Back on January 18 before Haley spoke as nominee for US Ambassador to the UN, Senator Bob Corker said he sometimes wondered if just-left Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had a pulse.

  In fact, Ban was quite active in helping his own relatives at the UN, promoting his son in law to the top UN job in Kenya, his brother mining in Myanmar with a "UN delegation," indicted nephew using Ban's name to sell real estate.

  When Haley began, she said the UN has a "checkered history." That's being diplomatic. Consider a head of Peacekeeping who has linked rapes to R&R, video here.

  Consider a head of the UN "Department of Public Information" who did no due diligence over indicted UN briber Ng Lap Seng - then evicted and still restricts the Press which asked here about it. Audit here, Para 37-40, 20b; NYT here.

   In response to questions, Haley praised the UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, questioned the one in South Sudan and that country's government. She noted that countries make money off their peacekeepers. The case in point, we note, is Burundi, here.

UN's 2017 Propaganda Plan, Here, Spins Rape & Cholera, Invites Budget Cuts, Gallach Must Go

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, January 28 – While in some place the UN is doing good work, the worst of the organization is exemplified in its Department of Public Information, particularly as regards planning to mislead the public in 2017 about such issues has peacekeepers' rapes and bringing deadly cholera to Haiti. 

See UN Plan, exclusively put online here.

   UN Peacekeeping needs radical reform, and UN DPI under Cristina Gallach needs to be disbanded. 

  Gallach produced a propaganda plan for 2017, which multiple outraged UN sources leaked to Inner City Press.  Gallach's "2017 Communications Guidance" has a paragraph on cholera in Haiti which does not mention that the UN brought the disease to the island. Page 9.

  While barely a million dollars, nearly all of it blood money from Ban Ki-moon's South Korea, has been raised, Gallach tells her propaganda troops to "promote the UN's efforts to combat the disease harnessing.. social media tools." 

  This is propaganda. 

 Likewise on sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, Gallach's rah-rah implies that the corner has been turned. Page 5. While the UN's billion dollar DR Congo mission is a mere footnote, the UN's failed envoy on Yemen is portrayed as successful on Page 6. The section on the Middle East , and pages 10 and 14-15, are designed to trigger budget cuts.

UN's "2017 Communications Guidance," Here, Is Propaganda Plan of Cristina Gallach, Who Should Be Fired by Matthew Russell Lee on Scribd

 It is Gallach who should be fired.

  As the UN remains unreformed after Ban Ki-moon's ten years ended with corruption, long asked about by the Press, exposed, budget cuts are coming.

 In Washington executive orders are being prepared to cut up to 40% of the US' contributions to the UN, and to fully cut funding to entities blamed for violation of human rights.

  Inner City Press has put that draft EO online here.

  One obvious question is whether the total denial of due process for whistleblowers - already part of US law - and investigative press which covers UN corruption constitutes such a violation.

  For example, the UN Department of Public Information under Cristina Gallach in early 2016 threw Inner City Press out of the UN, dumping its investigative files onto First Avenue, without a single hearing or opportunity to be heard, and no appeal since. 

All this for seeking to cover an event in the UN Press Briefing Room which was nowhere listed as closed, and leaving as soon as a single UN Security officer said the Spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, wanted Inner City Press out.

Gallach had a conflict of interest, having been asked by Inner City Press about her own links with Macau-based businessman Ng Lap Seng, facing trial (like Ban Ki-moon's nephew and brother) on bribery charges.

There are no rules, only the one-person fiat rule of an official dumped on Ban's UN by Spain, where she had previously managed, at most, seven people as spokesperson to Javier Solana. Nothing has been done; eleven months later Gallach still requires Inner City Press to have "minders" to cover the UN Security Council. 

  The cuts, and a new US Ambassador, are coming. Six days after a confirmation hearing in which she called for accountability at the UN, including for peacekeepers' abuses, Nikki Haley on January 24 was confirmed to replace Samantha Power as US Ambassador to the UN.

  This came after at least two business days of no photos replacing those of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the US Mission to the UN. 

  On January 24, Inner City Press asked former UN official, now Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom about Haley's call to defund countries whose peacekeepers abuse. Tweeted video here. There are reforms needed at the UN.

  Back on January 18 before Haley spoke as nominee for US Ambassador to the UN, Senator Bob Corker said he sometimes wondered if just-left Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had a pulse.

  In fact, Ban was quite active in helping his own relatives at the UN, promoting his son in law to the top UN job in Kenya, his brother mining in Myanmar with a "UN delegation," indicted nephew using Ban's name to sell real estate.

  When Haley began, she said the UN has a "checkered history." That's being diplomatic. Consider a head of Peacekeeping who has linked rapes to R&R, video here.

  Consider a head of the UN "Department of Public Information" who did no due diligence over indicted UN briber Ng Lap Seng - then evicted and still restricts the Press which asked here about it. Audit here, Para 37-40, 20b; NYT here.

   In response to questions, Haley praised the UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, questioned the one in South Sudan and that country's government. She noted that countries make money off their peacekeepers. The case in point, we note, is Burundi, here.

In 1st UN Bribery Case, 2 UN Documents To Be UNsealed in Weeks, Ban's Nephew Case Next

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 28 – The UN bribery case against Macau-based businessman Ng Lap Seng is moving toward trial, even as UN Under Secretaries General like Cristina Gallach who are implicated in it continue in place, still censoring the Press which covers the case.

  On January 27 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York an order issued sealing but setting a date to unseal "UN Documents" 1 and 2.  Here is the UN's own Office of Internal Oversight Services audit of aspects of Ng Lap Seng's purchase of the UN, see esp Paragraphs 37-40 and 20b regarding Gallach.

  Gallach's Department of Public of Information on January 27 prevented Inner City Press from covering a Holocaust event by new UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, here.

Gallach's no due process eviction and ongoing restriction of Inner City Press was done with a blatant conflict of interest: she is named in the audit (as USG of DPI), and Inner City Press had asked her about her links with Ng Lap Seng.

(In other Ng Lap Seng diplomatic fall-out related investigations, Dominica's Roosevelt Skerrit, who attended Ng's scam Macau "UN" event, is under fire for other passports now more timely than ever, here.)

  There is of course a second UN-related bribery case getting started, against Ban Ki-moon's brother Ban Ki Sang and nephew Dennis Bahn, who used the UN General Assembly and UNSG Ban Ki-moon's name for real estate fraud. And here, from South Korea.

 Here in the first of the two UN bribery cases, against Ng Lap Seng, is from the January 27 SDNY United States District Judge's order:

"The Government requested and I granted protective orders delaying the production by the Government of two documents produced to the Government by the United Nations. The first protective order related to a document discussed during the status conference held on December
8, 2016, (“UN Document #1”) and the second related to a document referenced in the Government’s email to the defense dated January 18, 2017, (“UN Document #2”). 

During the December 8 conference, I stated that I would review UN Document #1 again to “make a determination whether six weeks is enough time” for the production of that document in advance of trial. (Doc. 350 at 10:15-17.) I have taken another look at UN Document #1 and have reviewed UN Document #2 to determine how much time in advance of trial the Government should produce these documents to the defense."

  We'll have more on this. 

As the UN bribery scandal gathered force Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for an audit by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services of Sheri Yan's Global Sustainability Foundation (GSF), David Ng Lap Seng's Sun Kian Ip Group and its affiliates including the "World Harmony Foundation" and South South News, among others.

  The audit, completed early this year but first put online by Inner City Press, directly criticizes Cristina Gallach, the Under Secretary General for Communications and Public Information, Paragraphs 37-40 -- and 20b.

This last concerns the lack of any due diligence by the UN Department of Public Information under Under Secretary General Cristina Gallach of Ng Lap Seng's GWF's sponsorship of the “Ark of Return” ceremony.

  Now in December Ng has tried to get the superseding indictment dismissed, and the US government has opposed it.

The government writes, “The key players remain the same (the defendant as the bribepayer and Yin as his primary co-conspirator and deputy, the Antiguan Ambassador as the recipient of bribes, and the Dominican Ambassador as a party who was paid by the defendant and served his interests); the defendant’s alleged goals remain the same (namely, the obtaining of formal UN support for the Macau Conference Center); and the means and methods allegedly used by the defendant remain the same (including the defendant’s use of NGO-1 to funnel bribe payments).”

   NGO-1, South South News, remains in its UN office, while Inner City Press which has been covering this case, and UN links to it, was evicted and remains restricted 10 months later. When Inner group which put Ban together with Ng Lap Seng and Vivian Wang at Cipriani on 42 Street, tuxedo-ed UN/CA thugs came out and smashed Inner City Press' Periscope-broadcasting camera, video here.

  Ban was already selling the UN as far back as 2009:

From October 23, 2009, this Inner City Press report concerning Ng Lap Seng's partner Frank Liu, buying the UN under “unblemished” Ban Ki-moon:

“UNITED NATIONS, October 23 -- After announcing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's participation in a UN Day concert later in the day, Ban's Associate Spokesperson Farhan Haq declined to answer Inner City Press' questions about whether the concert's sponsors, including the World Harmony Foundation, Frank Liu and/or the World Eminence Chinese Business Forum, had receive payments from businessmen, and if any of these were scheduled for photo-op with Mr. Ban.

  Haq, in a nearly empty noon press briefing with no time constraints, nevertheless said that the questions would be answered at another press conference on Friday afternoon, "if you are there." ... An October 23 press release by the World Harmony Foundation states that "Secretary General Ban Ki-moon... tolled the bell signifying world harmony."

The press release was handed to Inner City Press at a surreal breakfast forum held by the WECBA and Frank Liu in Room 6 of the UN's Delegates' Dining Room. A businessman receiving an award stood at the front at a podium with the UN flag and intoned, "please remember that Chinese businessmen are the kindest people in the world."

Another speaker said that more people dying every year from obesity than hunger, and urged those in the audience not to eat too much. The Ambassador of the Dominican Republic urged the assembled businessmen to join the UN Global Compact.”

 That would be Francis Lorenzo, of South South News, who has pleaded guilty. (Under Gallach, South South News still has its UN office, while Inner City Press reporting on it remains evicted).

In late November a superceding indictment was filed which makes Gallach's malfeasance even clearer. The indictment now includes the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and specifies that South South News (NGO-1), which Gallach has left in its office while evicting Inner City Press which asked her about her connection to them, paid Ng Lap Seng's assistant in cash in order to evade taxes.

  The “honorary president” of South South News, who has pleaded guilty, was also involved in tax evasion. How corrupt can the UN be, to take no action on this bribery and tax evasion which corrupted the UN, while eviciting and restricting the investigative Press which asked about it? Gallach Must Go.