On Sudan, ICP Asks UN Why Gives Staff's Salary in Dollars to Bank of Khartoum, Spox Doesn't Know

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• published: 10 Feb 2016
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On Sudan, ICP Asks UN Why Gives Salaries to Bank of Khartoum, Stonewall By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive series UNITED NATIONS, February 9 – Amid continuing human rights abuses in Darfur, where the UN's Herve Ladsous mis-manages the UNAMID mission, and in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, the UN on February 5 moved to give more U.S. dollars to the Bank of Khartoum, from its own staff members' salaries. Inner City Press previously exclusively exposed this outrage, and a UN "reconsideration" ensured. On February 6, Inner City Press reported this one, and on February 9 asked UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric -- who didn't answer then, or since. Video here. From the UN transcript: Inner City Press: Question: I have two more, but I guess I’ll do one first and then see. I wanted to ask you about… there’s a situation in the UN system in Sudan where the headquarters here has decided to pay the UN staff’s salary to the bank of Khartoum in dollars, and they, in turn, get paid in local currency. So they’ve raised a lot of stink saying that what they get is about half what the UN pays in dollars to the Bank of Khartoum. They’ve alleged corruption. They’ve also threatened to strike. I wanted to know, what… by what logic is the UN giving… if they have dollars to pay, why don’t they pay their staff in dollars? And why do they let the Bank of Khartoum take half of the money that’s meant for staff…? Spokesman: I’m not aware of the situation. I can… Inner City Press: Are you going to check that out? Because… Spokesman Dujarric: Maggie. That would be, Voice of America, which has written to Dujarric in the past. This is a #FAIL with, it seems, a strike coming. A source exclusively told (and showed) Inner City Press, "UN published the long awaited salary scale in as a result of the local staff salary survey. The very big surprise that the Salary scale was issued in US Dollar with a note written at the end of the sheet that 'Salaries are payable in local currency converted at the prevailing United Nations rate of exchange during the month of payment.' "This means that Bank of Khartoum will get the staff Salaries in US dollars at 'Current rate' which is usually 50% of the actual market rate. Currently UN rate is 6.446.while market rate is SDG 12.00... Now, Staff Federation is meeting and the UN may face the biggest staff strike in its history." So the UN under Ban Ki-moon (and Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous) stand ready to subsidize the Bank of Khartoum. Ban Ki-moon, as Inner City Press has reported in detail, essentially broke the Staff Union or federation at UN Headquarters in New York. Ladsous refuses to answer Press questions (having more recently linked rapes to "R&R;") and Ban's Spokesman threw Inner City Press out of the UN Press Briefing Room in conjunction with the UN Corruption Association which took money from indicted Ng Lap Seng and gave him a photo op with Ban, seats with whom UNCA sells for $6,000. This is today's UN. The Next SG process, and the transparency being sought by the Free UN Coalition for Access and others, is all the more important so that the UN doesn't further decline. Previously on this Sudan issue, Inner City Press exclusively published a letter from the UN Federal Credit Union claiming the transfer was related to UN sanctions, and an opinion from the US Office of Financial Assets Control which says that is not the case. Inner City Press questions to the UN and its agencies were by then pending for days. On December 30, the day it was belatedly received, Inner City Press published a response from the UN and the UN Development Program, below. Since then, Inner City Press has obtained a series of e-mails from UN whistleblowers to UNDP about the transfer to the Bank of Khartoum, as well as UNDP's responses.