By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC-Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN NY Mag
UN GATE / SDNY, July 1 – While in the United Nations there is a flurry of statements about World Press Freedom Day, there has been no answer to questions about Secretary General Antonio Guterres' ouster and banning of Inner City Press which exposed the omission in his financial disclosure of a link to UN bribery firm CEFC China.
Inner City Press these days daily covers the Federal courts, where it covered the trial that convicted on bribery charges Patrick Ho of CEFC China Energy, which sought to buy the oil company of Gulbenkian Foundation which paid Guterres.
But on July 3, 2018 Inner City Press was inside the UN, as an accredited journalist, putting questions to the Ambassador of Cameroon about his claims that Guterres in his 38th floor office never asking him about his government's killing of Anglophones, only about favors he could do while Cameroon was chair of the UN Budget Committee.
Inner City Press was roughed up and ousted, and had been banned since.
In July 2021 the law firm of Quinn Emanuel, pro bono, wrote on behalf of Inner City Press to Guterres' head of media accreditation Melissa Fleming, and to each executive committee member of the United Nations Correspondents Association, seeking a dialogue to get Inner City Press back into the UN.
There was no answer from these, who have all virtue-signaled about press freedom and WPFD since. Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric was asked about the Quinn Emanuel letter and confirmed receipt, saying he didn't know if it would be responded to. Video. It hasn't been.
Meanwhile even as an UNCA member was outed as having set up the UNOPS corruption scandal, in her 5000 square foot Manhattan apartment, UNCA does nothing for Press freedom. It just wants to publish its promotional book - but fails. On July 1, 2022: "Dear colleagues, I hope you are well and enjoying the start of summer. This is to quickly update you on the status of the UNCA Directory. As the plan was to distribute the 2022 edition by June there have been inevitable delays in production due to supply shortages. We have now been told that the copies will not be available until the end of July. It is unfortunately beyond our control, but we hope to get them to you and our UN community as soon as possible and will send out a note when and where to pick up your copy. We hope to have a toast at the end of August/early September when everyone has returned from summer holiday and we can all re-unite in the UNCA room. Have a great holiday weekend and happy 4th! Valeria." Yeah.
Now we publish the letter, on DocumentCloud, here. And we will have more, much more, on this. Watch this site.
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