United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese is under scrutiny by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services over alleged payments for speaking events and honorarium for a fake lecture set up by an Internet prankster, UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said on Tuesday.
Neuer announced on social media that an OIOS case file had been opened on alleged impropriety by Albanese, and the UN Watch’s report on the issue, which had triggered the review, had been shared with the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner.
“We are filing papers today to terminate her mandate,” Neuer said on X.
BREAKING: The United Nations has opened an investigation into allegations that special rapporteur Francesca Albanese improperly took external funds from pro-Hamas groups to pay for her $20,000 lobbying trip to Australia. We are filing papers today to terminate her mandate. pic.twitter.com/G9jt58DIrt
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) July 2, 2024
The UN Watch head had on June 3 called for an investigation into Albanese for “illegally requesting payments for work done in her official UN capacity.”
The OHCHR Code of Conduct holds that special procedure mandate holders should “refrain from using their office or knowledge gained from their functions for private gain, financial or otherwise, or for the gain and/or detriment of any family member, close associate, or third party” and “not accept any honor, decoration, favor, gift or remuneration from any governmental or nongovernmental source for activities carried out in pursuit of his/her mandate.”
In an April correspondence provided to The Jerusalem Post by the anti-Zionist parody persona known as Rabbi Linda Goldstein, Albanese’s research assistant discussed a sum for her research institute in exchange for a keynote address to a fake Columbia University protest encampment webinar on the “morality of intifada.”
The self-proclaimed “Chief Rabbi of Gaza” proposed an honorarium, to which Albanese’s assistant noted that while “she cannot take honorarium for anything she does in her official capacity,” Albanese “kindly asks for this honorarium to be transferred to the fellowship of her volunteer which supports her mandate and work.”
“Could you please provide some detail on the sum of the honorarium?” said the assistant. “The research institute will then send you the invoice for payment.”
The prankster asked “Is it ok if it’s donated to UNRWA in her honor instead? Since I was displaced from Gaza as Chief Rabbi after October 7 it’s near and dear to us.”
Another assistant told the Daily Wire in May that Albanese had never agreed to the fake rabbi’s request, and that it was she and not Albanese who had requested the sum be transferred to her fellowship at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
UN Watch’s June complaint to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk and UN Secretary-General António Guterres argued that the process lacked transparency and had to be reviewed.
Sponsored speaking
Neuer also called for an investigation into Albanese for a November tour in Australia and New Zealand, alleging that there was no disclosure for the trips, which UN Watch estimated to have cost $22,500.
The Australian Friends of Palestine Association said on its website that it had “sponsored” Albanese’s visit to Adelaide, and Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Free Palestine Melbourne, and Palestinian Christians in Australia had “supported” her visit to Victoria, New South Wales, and the Australian Capital Territory. APAN also said on its website that it supported the visit.
UN Watch also demanded more information be made available about Albanese’s visit to New Zealand, saying the trip had been arranged by the Palestinians in Aotearoa Co-ordinating Committee (PACC) and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) groups and not the UN.
Albanese in November said on social media that the allegations by UN Watch about her Australia trip were “egregiously false” and the tour had been “paid by the UN as part of my mandate’s activities.”
“Continuous defamation against my mandate may be well remunerated, but won’t work,” Albanese wrote. “It just wastes time that should be used to help stop violence in oPt [occupied Palestinian territory].”
AFOPA said on X that Albanese had been authorized by the UN to accept its invitation and that the UN funded her travel and accommodation costs. The group said the allegations were a “malicious effort to discredit Ms. Albanese and AFOPA.”
“No Palestinian solidarity group paid for this trip,” said AFOPA.
UN Watch demanded that the UN explain the details of the sponsorship and support the NGOs provided for Albanese’s Australia trip, and produced receipts and documentation of expenses to the continent.
The watchdog group has long called for the termination of Albanese from her mandate, accusing her of spreading “Hamas propaganda.”
In a petition for her firing that had garnered almost 22,000 signatures by Tuesday, UN Watch decried Albanese’s dismissal of claims of rape and beheadings by Hamas on October 7, and her denial of the pogrom being the “greatest antisemitic massacre of our century.”
Albanese’s office did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment about the OIOS case file.