Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

CNN under the heading " Foundation founder's guilty plea: I helped fund U.N. official's extravagant life." and the subsequent poor reporting by THREE so called CNN journalists  said " Shiwei Yan has admitted in court of bribing a U.N. colleague and funding his lifestyle full of Rolexes, BMWs, tailored suits and even an in-home basketball court." As i reported in my blog in October the evidences presented is wrong, it isn’t UN or UN staff or even those who were members of staff of the office of the former president of the GA, who are, at the moment, being accused of anything.  It is a representative of a member state of the UN. This is totally different from the organization being involved in any kind of wrongdoing.  It should be reported accordingly. John Ashe was President of the UN General Assembly. Now lets look at the issue of who the President of the UN General Assembly (UNPGA) is. The President of the UN General Assembly is elected by member ...

As I reported in my previous blog about John Ashe, the UN and the Media that the UN was not involvement in this scandal but that it was a member state issue. I said i would return to this issue if i thought it was worth doing so. On Friday the 23rd (while I was at the Humphrey Bogart Film Festival) the UN Secretary General in response to a question on the subject said: "I have made it quite clear all the times that the United Nation's staff or leadership should work with the highest level of integrity and ethical standard.  That is why I have made this one of the top priorities, and I have asked OIOS (Office of Internal Oversight Services) to have a thorough investigation and I have established a small task force led by my Chief of Staff, Susana Malcorra, to draw out some means and measures -- how we can make more transparent and accountable measures, particularly on the case of President of General Assembly, Office of the President of General Assembly.  We have all of th...

I wasn’t going to blog on this issue, because it seems to be all over the media. However, when reading the media stories I'm very unimpressed by how they are reporting this. Prosecutor Preet Bharara, in his  diagram led with the headline,  “Alleged United Nations Bribery Scheme”. This gives  the impression that the UN is somehow involved in the bribery. From my reading of the situation and the evidences he is presenting, it isn’t UN or UN staff or even those who were members of staff of the office of the former president of the GA, who are, at the moment, being accused of anything. It is a representative and deputy representative of two member states of the UN. This is totally different from the organization being involved in any kind of wrongdoing.  This is totally different to the way it has been presented by Mr. Bharara which has then been translated into the way that much of the media has presented the story as organizational corruption at the UN. Let’s ...