UN of Guterres Uses Barred List To Push Press Out Then Poses With UN Correspondents Association Board

By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT CEFC Video

UNITED NATIONS GATE, March 23 – How lawless is the United Nations of Secretary General Antonio Guterres? In the midst of Inner City Press' questioning in 2018 about Guterres' links to now convicted UN bribery Patrick Ho's China Energy Fund Committee and Guterres' failures on Cameroon and elsewhere, his UN Security twice roughed up Inner City Press on June 22 and July 3, 2018. 

Then after Inner City Press filed a New York Police Department complaint against the UN and its Lieutenant Ronald E. Dobbins, none of its written questions to UN Security chief Peter Drennen and Guterres were answered. There are no due process rights for journalists in the UN of Guterres - and yet some correspondents smile with him and praise him, colluding in essence with censorship. 

  Take for example the 18 March 2019 UN Photo with this caption: "Secretary-General António Guterres (centre right) poses for a group photo with the Executive Committee of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA).  First row from left to right: Betul Yuruk (Anadolu Agency); Giampaolo Pioli (Quotidiano Nazionale); Edith Lederer (Associated Press); Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Chef de Cabinet; Valeria Robecco (ANSA News Agency), UNCA President; Mr. Guterres; Alison Smale, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications; Maria Khrenova (TASS News Agency); Seana Magee (Kyodo News); and Oscar Bolanos (OMB News).   Second row from left to right: Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General; Sherwin Bryce-Pease (SABC South Africa); Farnaz Fassihi (Wall Street Journal); Widad Franco (NHK Japan Broadcasting); Melissa Kent (CBC/Radio-Canada); Nabil Abi Saab (Al Hurra TV); Luke Vargas (Talk Media News); Carole Landry (Agence France Presse); and Erol Avdovic (Webpublicapress)." We'll have more on this.

   Compare: on March 14, Inner City Press UN bureau chief, this reporter, was invited to press freedom event in the UN sponsored by the UN Missions of France, Lithuania and Greece. I RSVP-ed and was told to come up up my ticket at the Visitors Entrance. I did; I was given a ticket with my name on it. Tweeted photo here.

After waiting in line, I showed my drivers license and the ticket and was waved into a second line for the metal detectors, where a sign said no video allowed. Periscope video here, until voluntarily turned off. Halfway through the line, four UN Security officers and a supervisor came over and ordered me to leave, saying I am on their barred list. I asked to see the list. I was pushed from behind and told I would be shown the list outside. They took the paper ticket, saying it is property of the UN. (There's still this photo.) But once they pushed me out onto the stairs, no one came out with the list. First of a series of Periscope videos here. 

UNCA promoted the event: "Dear colleagues,   UNCA is extending an invitation from the Permanent Mission of Greece to the UN to a CSW63 side event with the members states of the Group of Friends for the Protection of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Women’s Media Foundation on Journalism and the Empowerment of Women: New Challenges in the Digital World, taking place on Thursday, March 14th at 1:15 pm in ECOSOC.  Please see the invitation and concept note below for more details.  The event is open to all UN correspondents.  Valeria Robecco President, United Nations Correspondents Association." 

After a UN media accreditation "review" that did not include any opportunity to be heard for Inner City Press, Guterres' Under Secretary General Alison Smale on 17 August 2018 issued a letter "withdrawing" Inner City Press' UN media accreditation. Smale was asked how Inner City Press could appeal, including by UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression David Kaye, but did not answer that.

On 3 September 2018, facing the prospect of being unable to enter the UN to cover the General Assembly "high level" week for the first time in a decade, Inner City Press submitted an application for accreditation. But there was no action on it - in fact, during high level week, it emerged that Inner City Press had been put on a non-public "barred" list such that even if invited by a member state or UN agency, it could not enter the building.

Patrick Ho of CEFC was convicted on 5 December 2018. asked UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres what he will do to clean up the UN, where he has left CEFC without any audit, still in consultative status with the UN. On his way from his Mercedes to a glitzy UNCA fundraiser including George and Amal Clooney, Guterres refused to answer. This footage in now in a 22 minute Hong Kong TV documentary about the case, at Minute 22, here. Inner City Press again exclusively reported that Guterres had failed to include his paid position on the board of the Gulbenkian Foundation in his Public Financial Disclosure covering 2016 - and that Gulbenkian in 2018 was trying to sell its Partex Oil and Gas affiliate to CEFC as Guterres refused to audit CEFC and had Inner City Press which asked roughed up and banned.

On 2 January 2019 Smale's Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit has issued a denial of Inner City Press' September application for accreditation, stating only that

"Greetings Matthew LEE from ICP     INNER CITY PRESS,  

Your media accreditation request, with reference no: M72295425, has been declined for the following reason: Accreditation was withdrawn on 17 August 2018."

  This is Kafka-esque. Accreditation was withdrawn without any hearing or chance to appeal, but that decision is used to deny future accreditation. While preaching about due process and freedom of the press, Guterres' UN has a "one strike and your out" policy - even if there is no strike. The alleged violations were filming in place Smale's own MALU staff told Inner City Press it could film with out an escort, and recording her deputy in a known media stakeout position.

While Guterres was refusing throughout 2018 to begin any UN audit into China Energy Fund Committee, implicated in the UN bribery prosecution US v Patrick Ho, Guterres had a secret: his role on the board of Gulbenkian Foundation which was trying to sell its Partex Oil affiliate to CEFC. See Inner City Press' first exclusive report here.
   A now-removed Gulbenkian Foundation web page says Guterres continued as a board member into 2018. Archived here. In fact it was on 9 February 2018 that Gulbenian tweeted that Guterres was no longer on the board - AFTER it was reported that Gulbenian was trying to sell, or even had already sold, Partex to CEFC. This is called guilty knowledge. 
   For years Guterres received money as a board member of the Calouste Galbenkian Foundation, which despite its name is the 100% owner of Partex Oil and Gas. Partex has operations in Angola, Abu Dhabi, Brazil, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Oman and Portugal. It was to a Portuguese court that Guterres, while justifying no listing some of his income, disclosed in 2016 that he was paid at least € 2735 per month for his position with the Gulbenkian Foundation.
   But while a now deleted Foundation web page (archived here) stated that Guterres continued with Gulbenkian into 2018, Guterres did not list it on his most recent, and so far lone, UN Public Financial Disclosure, which covered 2016 ("Disclosing financial and other interests for the 2016 reporting year"). 
  So why did Guterres disclose his position with the Club of Madrid, but not with the Gulbenkian Foundation / Partex Oil and Gas? 
   Following the roughing up and banning from the UN of Inner City Press which has covered the CEFC scandal throughout, Guterres' head of Global Communications Alison Smale promised UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression David Kaye, who asked, that the UN would still answer Inner City Press' written questions.
   But even as 2018 came to a close Guterres' spokesmen Stephane Dujarric and Farhan Haq left unanswered 36 questions in a row from Inner City Press, including this: “Beyond the 35 questions from Inner City Press you refused to answer this week, this is a request on deadline that you (1) state when SG Guterres left his position on the Gulbenkian Foundation,
(2) state why Gulbenkian was not listed on SG Guterres' public financial disclosure which covered 2016; 
(3) explain how it is not a conflict of interest for SG Guterres to have refused to start an audit of CEFC in the UN, as requested by Inner City Press in January 2018, given CEFC's bid for the oil business of Gulbenkian. 
Also, again, state why under SG Guterres there have been no updates to the UN public financial disclosures since those filed for 2016. Also, again, explain your refusal to answer any of Inner City Press' questions this week despite USG Smale's statements to GAP, me and UNSR David Kaye. On deadline.” In March 2019, Dujarric and Haq have not answered a single Inner City Press question, on a range of topics.
   The questions have also been sent to the e-mail addresses of Guterres, his chief of staff Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, his Deputy Amina J. Mohammed, and Smale, who told Inner City Press she would take “under advisement” her 17 August 2018 pretextual withdrawal of Inner City Press decade long UN media accreditation.
  It seems clear that Guterres and his team have engaged in censorship for corruption, to conceal a blatant conflict of interest by Guterres. 
Back on 5 December 2018 Patrick Ho was found guilty of seven of eight counts of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and month laundering. 
The night of the verdict I asked UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres what he will do to clean up the UN, where he has left CEFC without any audit, still in consultative status with the UN. On his way from his Mercedes to a glitzy UNCA fundraiser including George and Amal Clooney, Guterres refused to answer. This footage in now in a 22 minute Hong Kong TV documentary about the case, at Minute 22,here. The next day when asked by another journalist why Guterres had refused to answer banned Inner City Press' question, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric claimed that the UN has “cooperated” with the prosecution. 

   CEFC remains an accredited non governmental organization with the UN's Economic and Social Council, while investigative Inner City Press for which I have been covering the case has been dis-accredited by and ousted from the UN, put on a list of those permanently banned without notice, due process or appeal. 

At UN Amid Syria, Gulf & Western Media UNCA Starts Counterfeit of ICP, and Ban Ki-moon's UN Cheers Them On, Joins In

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 6 -- The same group of insider wire services and Gulf media which tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN, unsuccessfully so far, have this week set up counterfeit Inner City Press social media accounts and troll-followed UN Missions, agencies and people who follow the Free UN Coalition for Access,@FUNCA_info.

  This comes less than a month after @InnerCityPress was named one of two "Twitterati" for UN coverage by Foreign Policy magazine (the only one based at the UN), and after InnerCityPress.com reported on the propagandistic distribution of questions at the missile-justifying stakeout by US Ambassador Samantha Power on September 5, here.

The goal seems to be to now create confusion about which is the real @InnerCityPress account. It is not hard:@InnerCityPress has 6,725 followers and UNCA-linked counterfeit for now less than 25, while mass-following over 800. It's a nasty piece of business. 

  Still, a communications chief of an NGO targeted by the UNCA trolls was fooled, and snarked about the account. Other FUNCA followers, when targeted, automatically followed back the counterfeit account.

It's a new low for this gang of scribes, who hide behind anonymous accounts since they work for big media companies like Reuters and Agence France Presse.

The UN bureau chiefs of these two companies, Louis Charbonneau and Tim Witcher respectively, both tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN, as documented by e-mails obtained from US government agency Voice of America under the Freedom of Information Act.

    (VOA's Broadcast Board of Governors, on which Secretary of State John Kerry serves, has started stonewalling on the follow-up request, so an appeal is being filed this week.)

   Click here for VOA's request that Inner City Press' UN accreditation be "reviewed," saying it had the support of Reuters, AFP and Bloomberg (which after a letter to Matthew Winkler purported to drop out of the campaign.)

Reuters' Charbonneau as first vice president of the UN Correspondents Association, it is documented, passed an internal anti-Press UNCA document to UN accreditation official Stephane Dujarric three minutes after promising not to do so. Story here, audio here, document here.

  Once the Voice of America led push was exposed, Dujarric begrudgingly extended Inner City Press' accreditation, while providing pointers on how to cover Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his head of peacekeeping Herve Ladsous. 

  Inner City Press quit the UNCA Executive Committee, to which it had been elected, and co-founded the Free UN Coalition for Access to actually protect journalists. (Here is a sample project by a FUNCA member in Somaliland, here.)

  Only this week, at a UN noon briefing, an UNCA insider tried to cut off the question of a FUNCA member reporting for Pacifica Radio's WBAI who asked about chemical weapons use by rebels in Syria. Click here for that.

In setting up the counterfeit social media account, the UNCA insiders stole the work of FUNCA's co-founder. UNCA long ago stopped defending journalists - it tries to get some thrown out of the UN, or to steal or destroy the work of others. 

  And the UN, informed of UNCA's trolling back in February -- here is on the record audio of UNCA's 2013 president Pamela Falk, ultimately responsible for all this -- has done nothing. 

  In fact, the UN's Department of Public Information has threatened to suspend or withdraw Inner City Press' UN accreditation for hanging a sign of the Free UN Coalition for Access on the door of its shared office, while UNCA has five signs.

  It's like being in a game in which the referee not only permits one side to sleazily (anonymously) attack the other, but even joins in gleefully in the attack. Apparently it's the law of the jungle.

  The UNCA Executive Committee members who have at a minimum done nothing to stop this are, as pictured lunching with Ban Ki-moon, Denis Fitzgerald of Saudi Press Agency; Melissa Kent of CBC; Sylviane Zehil of L'Orient le Jour; Tim Witcher of AFP; Ali Barada of An-Nahar; Kahraman Halicelik of Turkish Radio & TV; Pamela S. Falk of CBS; Lou Charbonneau of Reuters; Bouchra Benyoussef of Maghreb Arab Press; Yasuomi Sawa of Kyodo News; Masood Haider of Dawn; Unknown; Zhenqiu Gu of Xinhua; Stephane Dujarric of UN DPI

  This counterfeit trolling, this stealing or attempted destruction of journalists' work and attempts to block questions or censor is exactly was the Free UN Coalition for Access was formed and will continue. Watch this site.

    

Week After UN Raid of Press Office, Anonymous Cheers from UN Cowardice Association, UNCA

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 26 -- Eight days ago the UN raided Inner City Press' office; the president of the UN Correspondents Association Pamela Falk of CBS News took photographs.

  Now the two are blaming each other for being a party to the anonymous and totally improper transfer to BuzzFeed of photos taken inside the Press office during the raid, photos of the stacks of documents that at least the UN personnel were searching.

  Belatedly on March 25 the UN's Stephane Dujarric admitted to Inner City Press that “we recognize that you should have been called before entering your part of the shared office.”

  Since the desk photograph was taken from the Inner City Press part of the office, without Inner City Press present or even notified, the logical corollary of the admission is the need to disclose which individuals were brought or allowed into that position by the UN, which took photographs, and what they did with them.

  The response of Pam Falk of CBS and UNCA has been to make a legal threat to Inner City Press about even questioning her role. So what of the rest of UNCA, or of the other members of its Executive Committee?

  There is a reason, beyond anonymous social media accountsand comments, that UNCA is now becoming known as the UN Cowardice Association. What kind of media organization says nothing -- cheers and takes pictures actually -- when a journalist's office is raided and searched without notice or consent? This kind:

Ban's UNCA Lunch of the Lost, Feb 7, 2013, credit Evan Schneider, UNPhoto. From left: OSSG's Del Buey; Denis Fitzgerald of Saudi Press Agency; OSSG's Nesirky; Melissa Kent of CBC; Sylviane Zehil of L'Orient le Jour; Tim Witcher of AFP; Ali Barada of An-Nahar; Ban Ki-moon, Kahraman Halicelik of Turkish Radio & TV; Pamela S. Falk of CBS; Lou Charbonneau of Reuters; Bouchra Benyoussef of Maghreb Arab Press; Yasuomi Sawa of Kyodo News; Masood Haider of Dawn; Unknown; Zhenqiu Gu of Xinhua; Stephane Dujarric of UN DPI

  FUNCA has proposed, or is demanding, these two (additional) changes to the Media Access Guidelines which UNCA agreed to with the UN, and which provide no due process or other protections:

"Even if the UN determines that it must enter an accredited correspondent's office under what it seemed to be an emergency, the UN must immediately notify the correspondent and allow them access to witness the entry and what is done inside.

"Even if for some reason the UN determines to take photographs inside the journalist's office, it is prohibited for the UN to share the photographs with UN personnel without a strictly interpreted 'need to know,' and it is strictly prohibited for the UN to share the photographs with any non-UN person."

  UNCA, at least its Executive Committee, have done nothing. Apparently they like having no rules, or would like to have a rule which would allow them to throw out of the UN anyone they (don't) like. But anonymously, of course! That's why it's the UN Cowardice Association. Watch this site.

Here's from the UN's transcript of its March 25 noon briefing:

Inner City Press: Last Monday, 18 March, the UN entered my office, they said it was full of trash, they didn’t call me — fine. They took photographs, and it is my understanding that they gave the photographs to other journalists here who they know have sought my exclusion and expulsion from the UN, and that these photographs then in turn appeared on the BuzzFeed website on Friday. So I wanted to know very clearly, putting aside for a moment whether when they enter a journalist’s office, they should provide at least notice to the journalist, by what possible right will the UN distribute photographs to non-UN persons?

Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: I think you have had an answer from Stéphane Dujarric on this.

Inner City Press: He said only that the UN did not provide them to BuzzFeed and Pam Falk of UNCA [United Nations Correspondents Association] has denied that she provided them, although she was allowed to take photographs. So it is clear they are UN photographs. And I know for a fact that DPI [Department of Public Information] showed the photographs to other journalists here. So, the Stéphane answer doesn’t cut it. All it says is that they didn’t give it. So there is a middle man. But the question is, what is the right of UN journalists not to have their own office entered without their consent, photographed and by what reason and for what purpose will the UN give photographs to another person?

Spokesperson Nesirky: Well, as I say, I think — evidently not to your satisfaction — but Stéphane Dujarric has replied, and I don’t have anything further to say on the matter.

Watch this site.