As UNAIDS Names Aishwarya an Envoy, of Novartis Case & India's Global Fund Loss

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 24 -- Just as the Clinton Global Initiative is a platform for Proctor & Gamble and even Freeport-McMoRan mining to announce partnerships with Smoky Robinson, for example, the UN General Assembly allows UN agencies to launch new public faces.

  UNAIDS on Monday "appointed global Indian icon Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as International Goodwill Ambassador." Inner City Press asked UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe, as before, about the scandal of the Global Funds on Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis not funding anymore (after it "contributed the maximum of `630.44 crores in 2009-10 and `307.58 in 2010-11" in India.) Video here, from Minute 19:45.

Sidibe put a brave face on this, saying this is an opportunity for India to start funding its own programs. Yes, but that's true of all countries previously receiving Global Fund help.

Sidibe indirectly acknowledged the problem, referring to "Global Fund reforms" so it will have "credibility again."

It's rare for the UN system to admit the need for more credibility: so far, for example, no one has been held accountable for the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan scandal documented in leaked audits Inner City Press has published. 

   But even on this, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon ended up giving yet another post, AIDS envoy to Central Asia and Eastern Europe, to the man responsible for the Global Fund scandal: Michel Kazatchkine. One still wonders what Sidibe thinks of this.

  Inner City Press asked Aishwarya Rai Bachchan about the case in India in which Novartis is pursuing a patent case in such a way as would undermine the availability of generic drugs, including AIDS drugs, at lower costs. Video here, from Minute 21:54.

  Aishwarya Rai Bachchan replied that, "I'm learning so that I can step forward." Fair enough. Watch this site.

UNaccoutable on AIDS, Ban Ki-moon GIve Post to Kazatchkine Ignoring Global Fund Scandal & Exit

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.