Banking on Dictators: UN and BNP's Sudan Sanctions Trial

Résumé du livre

  In the lobby of the Hotel Rotana in Khartoum in Sudan, there was an automated teller machine that spat out US dollars as if you were in Dubai. As a journalist I was part of a UN Security Council mission to Sudan and South Sudan, as well as Chad, Kenya, Ivory Coast, DR Congo - and Rwanda.

  It was the UN, notoriously corrupt, which told me to violate UN sanctions to pay my part of the hotel bill. Back in Chad, I had cut out without paying the bill at the once grand Hotel Kempinski in N'Djamena, redecorated with artillery shells during a rebel raid on the capital.

   But the Rotana demanded payment. I violated US sanctions as the UN told me - then wrote about it, then and now.

 In between, I was thrown out of the UN for my reporting on their failures. When we were in South Sudan, people threw rocks at our caravan of expensive white 4 by 4s. This would happen again when I went on my last trip with the UN, to Haiti, right before Secretary General Antonio Guterres had me thrown out for asking and writing about his murky finances.

  Now I have been covering the trial against BNP Paribas for its role in enabling genocide in Sudan. Each day I live tweet the testimony, including the bank's paid experts saying that it did nothing wrong, or that the Janjaweed would have killed Darfuris with or without BNP as the regime's lone correspondent bank.

  Then I email questions to the stonewalling spokesperson who has served, in order, Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon and Guterres: Stephane Dujarric. He lives in a penthouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and refuses all of my questions. I post videos of his staged noon briefings during the lunch break of the BNP genocide trial. And I remember back...

  The UN plane flew over the moonscape of Sudan. I sat in the back row, looking out the window. I was listening to Joy Division on headphones, tuning out the conversation of the UN scribes, so-called Correspondents, in the rows up ahead.

  On our last trip, to Sri Lanka, they had accused me of undermining their relationship with the UN's then-humanitarian chief John Holmes. He had briefed us on the UN plane to Colombo, and I'd asked what he did with all the emails from Tamils asking why the UN was letting them be slaughtered.

 I just delete them, Holmes said.

 When we got to Colombo and were shuttled to our hotel, I quickly wrote up what he'd said and uploaded it as a story to Inner City Press. The next morning in the lobby, where we were supposed to assemble to be ferried by helicopters up to what had been the war zone, the Bloodbath on the Beach, I was told: John Holmes is looking for you.

 I went and found him and began to explain when he cut in.

 "I will never speak to you again," he said.

 "You never said it was off the record," I reminded him.

 He shook his head and walked away.

  Later that day as we were fed a huge Sri Lankan lunch on an air force base from which sorties over the Tamil refugee camps were flown, bombing and strafing civilians, the reporter from Reuters approached me.

 "You knew it was meant to be off the record," he hissed.

  I shook my head.

  The woman from BBC said, "You ruin it for all of us."

 Indeed. So on this trip to Sudan I sat in the back of the plane. Planning my questions for UNAMID chieftain Ibrahim Gambari, the Pasha of Al Fasher.

  In New York, Gambari had invited me along these some of these correspondents to an expensive Lebanese dinner - of course paid for by the UN, meaning taxpayers.

  But when UNAMID whistleblower send me photos of Gambari lounging around his El Fasher palace, even lying on big pillow, Gambari was angry.

  So too UN Peacekeeping chief Ladsous, when his meeting with indicted war criminals was exposed, as had been Gambari attending the wedding of the daughter of Musa Hilal.

  Other blasts from the past, as the UAE-armed Rapid Support Forces moved in on El Fasher in 2025: JEM... Mini Minawi. See below - leading to October 17, 2025 verdict over $20 million.

Book published on day of verdict, October 17, 2025

Republished Oct 29 after Amazon banned book