Nice work
The taxpayer is being stung so this Lord can live in Admiralty House
By Claudia Rosett and James Forsyth
The Spectator (U.K.)
November 7, 2007
Mark Malloch-Brown, the minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, was the most prestigious recruit to Gordon Brown's ministry of all the talents. But this appointment might be about to come back and embarrass the Prime Minister with controversy brewing over the former UN deputy secretary-general's taxpayer funded accommodation.
In February 2006 Mark Malloch Brown, then the UN Secretary General's chief of staff, was interviewed by Claudia Rosett at the UN, and found himself increasingly furious at the line of questioning about his housing arrangements in New York. Malloch Brown had caused controversy with his decision to live on the smart country estate of George Soros, the financier who forced Britain out of the ERM in 1992, and a major donor to left-wing causes. Finally, the UN mandarin barked that he was doing 'God's work' before storming out of the interview. Malloch Brown might well consider himself to be on a mission from God. But, now, as then, he lives more like a mediaeval cardinal than an ascetic monk.
. . .
Malloch Brown's determination to keep the flat may not be in the best interests of the government's image, but it conforms to a pattern of behaviour. The minister is simply keeping himself in the style to which he has become accustomed. Before moving to London, Malloch Brown had been living as a tenant on George Soros's estate in Katonah, New York. Katonah is in Westchester Country, home to the Clintons, and about an hour from New York City itself.
Soros's estate is so large that only a curving tree-lined drive can be seen through the eagle-topped red-brick front gates. Malloch Brown was paying a UN-subsidised rent of around $10,000 a month for his accommodation. He could well afford this as by the end of his time at the United Nations his total, take-home compensation package amounted to $287,087 p.a. Malloch Brown might be doing 'God's work', but he was receiving his rewards on earth, too. He was paid more as number two at the UN than Dick Cheney was as Vice President.
Despite being asked by the press on a number of occasions about the details of his housing arrangements in Katonah, Malloch Brown has provided neither details nor documentation. At a UN press briefing in New York on 20 June 2005, about six months after he had become Annan's chief of staff, Malloch Brown was asked by a reporter to explain the full extent of his financial relationship with George Soros. He heatedly denied any financial relationship, praised Soros for his work around the world and tore a strip off the questioner. He went on to say, 'In UNDP we collaborate extensively. For that reason, it was absolutely critical when we set our hearts on a house on his property that if we were going to rent it, we'd pay the full commercial rent, and we have done so.'
But neither proof nor any further details were forthcoming. Indeed, Malloch Brown has refused even to say when he began his tenancy.
The relationship between the UNDP and Soros remains obscure. The UN last year was unable or unwilling to supply a complete list of details accounting for this relationship; neither did Soros's Open Society Institute open up about it. But Malloch Brown and Soros were sufficiently close professionally to give a joint press conference on 19 March 2002 at a global aid gathering in Monterrey, Mexico.
Nor did Malloch Brown ever disclose his finances to the public — despite presiding over reforms that he assured the world would mean more transparency. In 2005, Malloch Brown told the US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations that 'transparency and accountability are the watchwords for the United Nations in the new century' and described 'more rigorous financial disclosures by senior officials' as an immediate management reform that the UN was already undertaking. In 2006, the UN Secretariat launched a reform requiring senior UN administrative officials to fill out financial disclosure forms and file them with the UN's new Ethics Office. But this 'financial disclosure' policy came with an extraordinary loophole of which Kafka would have been proud: the forms did not actually need to be disclosed to the public. This year, Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan's successor, and his deputy both voluntarily released their financial forms to the public. But despite much talk about transparency, neither Annan nor Malloch Brown chose to release theirs.
The connection with Soros became ever closer once Malloch Brown left the UN. Malloch Brown was appointed to senior positions at both Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute, which promotes democracy and the rule of law and which Soros founded and of which he remains the chairman. The Wall Street Journal cheekily dubbed Malloch Brown part of an 'axis of Soros'.
Another episode at the UN that calls Malloch Brown's judgment into question concerns a glowing book on the UNDP published in late 2006 by Cambridge University Press. It turns out the book had been commissioned by Malloch Brown shortly before he left the agency. More than half a million dollars had been spent to hire a historian, give him a travel budget and then buy copies of the book from CUP. To no one's great surprise, the book is very positive about Malloch Brown's tenure.
Back in Westminster, Malloch Brown's appointment in June was widely and correctly seen as a message that things were going to change on foreign policy. He was, after all, known to oppose the Iraq war, and had slapped Bush and Blair down over the war in Lebanon. Malloch Brown's appalling relations with the Bush administration — the President personally pleaded with the incoming UN Secretary-General to get rid of him — were music to the ears of those who were desperate for reassurance that Brown was not going to pursue the same strategy as Blair on the global stage.
In Washington, however, Malloch Brown's appointment caused considerable consternation and continues to cast doubt on Brown's judgment. Confidants of the Prime Minister now report that Brown claims that if he 'had known it would cause such a fuss, I wouldn't have appointed him'. Nile Gardiner, a Republican foreign-policy thinker and expert on US–UK relations who is close to the White House, says that Malloch Brown is viewed in Washington as 'viscerally anti-American'.
. . .
Is this just a fable of folly and grandeur? No. There are substantive policy issues where Malloch Brown could well end up causing Brown problems. The government has already been embarrassed by the revelation that when at the UN, Malloch Brown was enthusiastic about the concept of a European Union seat on the Security Council. And the 'wise eminence', with his extensive knowledge of the UN, is bound to want to insert himself into the debate over what language should be used in any further resolutions about Iran if the crisis escalates.
Brown defends Malloch Brown's appointment to those committed to the special relationship by saying that all he really wanted was his expertise on Darfur. But this answer doesn't stack up. Since taking on the job, Malloch Brown's diplomacy in the region has been unexceptional.
What does all this tell us about the PM? First, that he gave too much away in his first attempt at top-level international negotiating. The problem for Brown is that the Malloch Brown situation is a quagmire. If the Prime Minister gets rid of the grandest recruit to his ministry of all the talents, his own judgment will be called into question. If he keeps him, Malloch Brown could end up causing the government major embarrassment. This intractable foreign policy problem is solely the Prime Minister's creation. How Brown solves it will tell us a lot about him and his ability to rectify his own mistakes.
Claudia Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the US-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and James Forsyth is online editor of The Spectator.
Click here for the full story.
Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2254 Fax: 202-228-3796
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