At UN, Sachs Admits Malawi Unrest Felt in Villages, Soros Says "We Can't Betray"

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 3, updated -- When George Soros and Jeffrey Sachs came to the UN on Monday to talk about Millennium Villages, it began with only good news.

When Inner City Press asked about the two Villages inMalawi, where the forces of President Bingu wa Mutharika have killed at least 20 protesters this year, Sachs acknowledged this was "felt" in the villages, but emphasized that "the Villages are resilient." Video here, from Minute 25:25.

Sachs also called Malawi's government "erratic," among other things.

Later, Malawi's Permanent Representative to the UN Brian Bowler pointed out to Inner City Press that Sachs' economic advise has, in fact, injured many countries.

Bowler presented an alternative view of Malawi on which we intend to write soon. He said Africa was undercovered during the recent UN General Debate. Sachs speaks at the Harvard Club, Bowler said, and we are not allowed in to rebut him.

Soros' response to the question acknowledged a tension between commitment not to leave a Millennium Village once funding begins, and the "governance" issues posed by developments like those in Malawi. "We can't close" the Villages, Soros said, it would "betray the trust of the villagers." Video here, from Minute 28.

Some consider these 14 Millennium Villages in 10 countries akin to a bandage on a cancer. Other say that when running projects in states where the leader killed protesters this has to be acknowledged and taken into account.

Soros recounted how the "newly elected president of Guinea" -- that would be Alpha Conde -- asked for help with domestic rice production, since the country imports half its rice. Soros said, "I turned to the Millennium Villages, they designed" a rice project.

While interesting, it's noteworthy that Conde's Guinea recently sent tons of rice to Sierra Leone, a country with a UN peacekeeping mission for years. Importing rice to re-export it? Watch this site.

Footnote: Soros was also by the UN last week, at a soiree for Global Witness, which among other things has been critical of former UK prime minister Tony Blair's double service for JP Morgan Chase and ostensibly the UN Quartet in the Middle East. One wanted to ask about this, and the Open Society Foundation's critique of policies in Afghanistan, but the moderator said Millennium Villages would be the focus. To be continued.

On Occupy Wall Street, UN Has No Comment, Soros Blurs Tea Party, Small Business

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 3 -- Two days after 700 non-violent protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, Inner City Press on Monday asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky if Ban or the UN had anything to say about the arrests.

Nesirky said, "Obviously we are aware of the reports. I don't have anything immediately for you, nothing at the moment." Video here, from Minute 9:40.

The UN is less than 100 blocks south of the United Nations which has issued pronouncements usually following the US' about crackdowns in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.

Reports of the arrests had gone all over the world, and Ban Ki-moon was in New York over the weekend, arriving Monday morning to swear in the fourth consecutive French chief of UN Peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous. Whereas sometimes Ban sees advantage in commenting, here he apparently saw none.

Zuccotti Park on October 2, Ban Ki-moon not shown, (c) MRLee

At a previously scheduled press conference at the UN George Soros was also asked about the Occupy Wall Street protests. He answered that he "understood the sentiment," then talked about small businesses having their credit card interest rates raised from eight to twenty eight percent and mentioned the Tea Party.

Inner City Press, having been at the protest on October 1 and the next day in Zuccotti Park saw fewer small businesses -- other than book sales and quilt repairs -- and little direct discussion of small business credit card rates. The critique was more fundamental, that "Predatory Lenders" -- and perhaps currency speculators -- "Ate My World."

George Soros & Jeff Sachs at UN Oct 3, OWS not shown (c) MRLee

Also at Monday's UN noon briefing, Nesirky gave a long answer to Inner City Press' question from September 30, about a plan to build a new building for the UN on top of what is now a public playground. Nesirky said that the plan is by the UN Development Corporation, not the UN, and the UN has not been part of the planning.

Inner City Press asked if the UN Foundation having hired a lobbyist to counter opposition to the loss of the playground could be attributed to the UN. Apparently not. And so it goes at the UN.

Soft UN & Dead Media Replaced By NGOs, Elite Soros Crowd Told at River Club

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 26 -- When the UN has gone soft and corporate media is dying, who or what will pick up the slack?

That was the question Monday night at the River Club ten blocks north of the UN where the non-governmental organization Global Witness hosted George Soros, financiers, journalists and tennis players in an Art Deco space beside a gleaming turquoise pool.

One of Global Witness' three founders Charmian Gooch told the crowd how they began on Cambodia, then illegal mining and now Gaddafi's Libya investment funds.

She said proudly, we have no membership, no public relations, no marketing. Then an Alex Soros was introduced to speak, as a history student at Berkeley, followed by investigative journalist Ken Silverstein.

Silverstein spoke of the death of media, how the Los Angeles Times closed its investigative unit and tried to replace three reporters' 900 bylines a year.

He now works at Harper's, and did a story on the side for Global Witness but at least initially kept his name off it, he told Inner City Press, in order to get into Cambodia.

All of this took place close to the UN, during the annual General Debate, but the UN wasn't mentioned once.

Soros looks heavenward at GW event by UN Monday night, publish what you pay

Inner City Press asked Silverstein about Equatorial Guinea being the head of the African Union, and Gabon on the Security Council. Silverstein said that the son of Equatorial Guinea's long time ruler Obiang leaving the US shows the power of the pen. But to what end?

Another journalist present cautioned, you cannot change the world. Then what was this event about, with the senior George Soros present, acknowledged from the podium? Tennis players in whites wandered through on their way to indoor courts, the signs outside of which told "Babysitters" to not enter without The Pro.

Footnote: Among the attendees was one Scott Wallace, writing about uncontacted tribes in Brazil. Inner City Press asked him about such tribes impacted by the Belo Monte dam; he said they exist. He said Peru denies the existence of such tribe. He will be in New York at the Explorers' Club in November. And we will try to be there.

As UK's Malloch Brown Again Seeks Cash, Sri Lanka and IMF Loan Questions, UN Scandals

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/ukmmb1srilanka070809.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 8 -- The United Kingdom, whose power is so magnified by its permanent seat on the UN Security Council that like France it is one of the UN's major defenders, finds its interface with the Organization in some disarray.

Beyond the so-called "Facebook-gate" surrounding UK Permanent Representative Sir John Sawers, fairly or not, now the UK's Minister for the UN Lord Mark Malloch Brown has announced he will step down by the end of July "for family reasons."

This comes a fortnight after Malloch Brown told Inner City Press that "As far as I'm concerned, the IMF loan [to Sri Lanka] is not going anywhere." Given the personal qualifier, one wonders about the UK's engagement with the Rajapaksa administration going forward, particularly given lack of UK statements on the ongoing internment in northern Sri Lanka including by ostensible envoy Des Browne (who was seen July 7 during Prime Minister's Questions raising not Sri Lanka but a proposed business closing in his Kilmamock district).

This new transition recalls Malloch Brown's flirtation with the private sector, specifically the empire of his long-time friend George Soros, just after he left the UN with Kofi Annan at the end of 2006. While working for the UN in New York, the Malloch Browns lived on a Soros-owned estate in suburban Westchester.

When questioned about the potential conflict of interest, given for example the intertwining of the UN Development Program which MMB had headed with Soros' Open Society Institute, MMB said he was paying $10,000 a month. He declined to provide documentation.

Subsequently, after Inner City Press exposed MMB's decision while at UNDP to spend over $500,000 on a purportedly independent scholarly book praising UNDP and himself, Malloch Brown lost his cool and dropped the "J word" -- jerk -- for which then UN spokesman Stephane Dujuarric apologized days later.

The book, "UNDP: A Better Way?" by Craig N. Murphy, thanks as the first acknowledgement "Mark Malloch Brown, who hired me to write this history. He offered the unbeatable combination of... a good salary and travel budget." MMB like Murphy continues to search for that.

Before Malloch Brown's second hand apology, a new rationale was found: Malloch Brown was defending his friend Brian Gleeson, embroiled then in a separate UNDP scandal. Now Gleeson is being recycled as the Australian government's Coordinator General for "Remote Indigenous Services." Another of MMB's UNDP (and by his own account Soros) compadres, Kalman Mizsei, has resurfaced as EU envoy in Moldova.

Where will Malloch Brown recycle himself now? His sudden resignation was not raised by the opposition during the July 8 Prime Minister's Questions, fielded by House of Commons Leader Harriet Harman given Gordon Brown's commitments at the G-8 meetings in Italy -- at which as exclusively reported by Inner City Press he UN World Food Program is flying in school children from Ghana for a "simulated feeding program" display for G-8 leaders' spouses. Which spouses will attend? What does Malloch Brown think of this UN World Food Program initiative? Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/ukmmb1srilanka070809.html

UNDP's Dervis Admits Paying Saakashvili Unwise, Dodges on Congo Security and Kosovo Fees

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/undp1gadervis102208.html

UNITED NATIONS, October 22 -- After the UN Development Program had defended paying salary to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili since Inner City Press exclusively reported on it, on Wednesday UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis belatedly acknowledged that payments to such high officials "raises questions" and "may not be desirable."

Under the rubric of UNDP's lack of impartiality, and as limited by UNDP to post-conflict situations, Inner City Press asked Dervis about the Georgia program, about UNDP paying or processing the salary of an ex-UN employee who now works for the Kosovo government, and about a judgment against UNDP in favor of the widow of a UNDP consultant sent without security to Eastern Congo and killed. On this last, Dervis read an apology from notes, while mistakenly locating the murder, and UNDP's negligence, as having been in Kenya. Video here, from Minute 28:15.

After Inner City Press had reported on UNDP's Georgia program, in which it funneled money from George Soros' Open Society Institute to President Saakashvili and his inner circle, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denounced the program as a "privatization of the UN." Wednesday Inner City Press asked Dervis to respond to the criticism.

While quickly saying, "I fully agree with the Russian foreign minister," Dervis did not step away from processing such money for OSI or other -- apparently any other -- private foundation. UNDP takes a fee in such deals, although in recently months UNDP's spokesman has repeatedly declined to provide information about the fees UNDP charges. Ironic in light of this stonewalling, Dervis three times said that programs like that in Georgia "must be transparent."

Regarding the verdict against UNDP of 143,000 pounds, Dervis said that UNDP now has the ability, through the freedom of so-called ex gratia payments, to provide support in such circumstances. Given the now-admitted inadvisability of UNDP's program to pay Georgia's president, it is doubtful that giving UNDP less oversight in payments is advisable. But what Dervis did not address -- along with the Kosovo question, which he did not answer at all -- was the lack of security that UNDP provided to Joe Comerford when they sent him to the Congo, where he got killed. Click here for more on the case.

This seems to be a pattern with UNDP, which was criticized in the UN's recent reports about the December 2007 bombing of UN premises in Algiers Yet Dervis has yet to take any questions on UNDP's actions before the Algiers bombing, and his spokesman declined to comment on or even confirm UNDP's vacature of its premises in Amman, Jordan, despite the UN's head of security confirming it to Inner City Press. Transparency, indeed...

And see, www.innercitypress.com/undp1gadervis102208.html

UNDP's Funding of Saakashvili Causes Russian Uproar, For-Ex Stonewalling Continues

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/undp1russia091108.html

UNITED NATIONS, September 11 -- As the UN Executive Board lurched through the fourth of its five day meeting, with UNDP management having stoked its its ostensible overseers into demanding it re-open the flow of money to Kim Jong Il's North Korea, one of UNDP's equally dubious programs on the other side of the political spectrum fell under fire. It involves UNDP having paid salary to Georgian president Saakashvili, with its own funds and those of George Soros' Open Society Institute. Inner City Press first reported on the program in December 2006, then again on August 25, 2008, click here for that story. This was picked up by Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin and by Russian media. See examples here, here and here.

The question to be answered is, are the members of UNDP's Executive Board really informed by UNDP management what type of programs are going on?

Meanwhile, despite the Executive Board president's gushing on September 10 that no member disagreed with the head-long rush to return to Pyongyang, even in the face of uncertainty if Kim Jong Il is on his death bed or dead, possibly toppled by even harder-line generals who have restarted that country's nuclear program, in front of the Security Council Inner City Press asked U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad for the U.S. Mission position, video here at Minute 6:43:

Inner City Press: UNDP has been meeting this week. The US position seems to be that the UNDP should go back to North Korea. Do you feel--

Ambassador Khalilzad: We have been under the view that there is a need for steps to make sure that some of the problems that have been listed will not take place again. Thank you.

But when Inner City Press asked UNDP's spokesman early on September 11 for a copy of Regional Directly Ajay Chhibber's so-called "roadmap" to return to North Korea, which even the Executive Board president said should be distributed and made transparent, it was not provided.

Also in front of the Security Council on September 11, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari to explain the UN system's silence while it was losing 20% of aid funds to the Than Shwe regime. "Matthew, I hope you raise that with [OCHA's] John Holmes and with UNDP." Video here, from Minute 7:19.

Well, Inner City Press has had currency exchange loss questions pending with UNDP for weeks and weeks, and has repeated sent reminded, still with no response. This did not impinge on the self-congratulatory dream world of some Executive Board delegates cooking up rubber stamp resolutions in Conference Room C in the UN's basement on the night of September 11. Nor did it stop once and future UNDP-er Jan Mattsson for patting himself on the back for finally getting an audit of the UN Office for Project Services after seven years, and moving to pay off a blatant cost overrun for Afghan elections in 2005. It all cuminates, he told the Board on September 11, in a new UNOPS web site, in three languages: English, French and Spanish. Maybe that's why Russia didn't know about the funding to Saakashvili...

Meanwhile, UNDP has not provided answers as simple as the volume of fees it collects as a conduit for funding for prisons and military barracks all over the world, and to pay an ex-UN Kosovo Mission staffer to work for Kosovo's government. Not only could this dubious middle-man role raise more Russian questions about UNDP -- more generally, it is for reasons like these that many believe that UNDP is an opaque, unaccountable and even corrupt organization.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/undp1russia091108.html

UN's Engagement with Saakashvili Included $1500 a Month, Soros and Sweden Also Paid

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/undp1georgia082508.html

UNITED NATIONS, August 25 -- Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was paid $1500 a month by the UN Development Program earlier this decade, on top of his official presidential salary, UNDP has told Inner City Press. UNDP says the goals of these payments, in which the Swedish government and financier George Soros joined, were to allow the Georgian "government to recruit the staff it needed and also to help remove incentives for corruption."

While receiving these $1500 monthly payment, Saakashvili committed to increase tax collection in Georgia. Deals were signed with , among others, British Petroleum, for the Baku - Tbilisi - Ceyhan oil pipeline. UNDP, and presumably its two co-funders, applauded this development.

Last week at the UN, Russia accused the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of being biased in its mapping of refugee flows created by the Georgia - South Ossetia - Russia conflict. Russia also accused UN political chief Lynn Pascoe, an American, of being biased in his briefing of the Security Council. The US Committee for UNDP lists and offered praise for this paying of Saakashvili's salary.

Inner City Press first reported on UNDP's Governance Reform Program in Georgia in late 2006. Earlier this month, as the Georgian conflict heated up, Inner City Press asked UNDP how much was spent under the program? Where did the funds come from? Who got paid? Has the program continued?

Six days later, UNDP responded to Inner City Press that

On Georgia, the Governance Reform Program initiative you asked about, was two-pronged. To enable the government to recruit the staff it needed and also to help remove incentives for corruption, UNDP created a Salary Supplement Fund, funded initially by $1 million from OSI and $500,000 from UNDP, and later supplemented by another $1 million from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). This fund was designed to provide leading public servants with a wage that, though modest by international standards, was sufficient for Georgia. The fund targeted the country's highest officials: the President, Prime Minister, and Speaker of the Parliament each received $1,500 per month, ministers, $1,200, deputy ministers, $700.

In order to make the programme as efficient as possible, a clear "exit strategy" was built into the program, so that the government committed to assuming responsibility for the salary supplements over three years. The government was required to make a credible commitment to increase tax revenues in order to cover this rise in expenditure. Transparency was viewed as essential, and the government agreed to post all details of the salary supplements on an open website (http://www.drf.org.ge/). Finally, and most importantly, the government agreed that the salary supplements would be one piece of a larger effort to streamline the existing bureaucracy and create in its place a well-paid and well-organized civil service.

The second prong of the initiative was a Capacity Building Fund. This was designed to provide the government with short-term specialist expertise in areas of urgent concern and longer-term support in capacity building at a variety of ministries and other state institutions.

The government has been so successful in improving tax collection that the salary supplement program for top officials was fully taken over by the state budget after just a single year (rather than the planned three). Thanks to a drive to curb evasion and improve administration, tax revenue increased by 50%, or 4 percentage points of GDP, just in 2004. Unused UNDP and OSI funds earmarked for salary supplements were at this point transferred to the Capacity Building Fund for use in civil service reform.

Notably, the web site that UNDP says it insisted on was slow to load on Monday. So much for transparency... Why would Soros' Open Society Institute use UNDP to channel money to "top-off" Saakashvili's and a few others' salaries? In how many other countries does UNDP perform this function? This last, we'll be reporting further on. But first, UNDP should answer some questions.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/undp1georgia082508.html