During his stay with Hermela TV , Former United Nations top anti-corruption official in Kosovo, James Wasserstrom said he suffered a lot after reporting colleagues accused of corruption.
There was a bid for a five billion USD project to rebuild a new coal mine and power plant. In one of the bids, there was a kick back if that better one of 500 million USD, 10 percent that would be split among the Kosovo officials who were making the decision and the UN officials were making decision during that time.
James said that the number two was my direct superior who was an American retired army general. And James got this information from multiple sources which were unconnected. So that it made a credible allegation and James reported to Inspector General. She initiated an investigation that unfortunately it was leaked out of UN headquarters right back to the very people that he was accusing of wrongdoing.
And they retaliated against him in an egregious bashing which included arresting him, doing illegal search and seizure of his property.
They also tried to organize a hit on me which was blocked by his closest friends from who were Kosovars and who got word of this before he did and then without even telling him. So that led to his several investigations against him thatwere all retaliatory and trumped up.
He filed a retaliation claim against the United Nations including the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and that led to a seven-year ordeal in the UN so-called justice system, which set a number of precedents where he put all of the UN whistleblower protection machinery the US,UN ethics machinery to the test. And it failed every single test ultimately James won at the lower court level but they won at the highest at the higher court level.
James said that he can’t really say talk much about the details, because he never really knew what they were the best people to talk about that would be the people who saved his life.
They have never disclosed what the substance of it was that’s part of the way their culture operates.
“All I know is that when there was word of my closest friend who was also his deputy and with whom I’m in very close touch now because of he started checking under the car that we were driving. I noticed he was doing that but it turned out subsequently years later.
we discussed the fact that there had that he had got word that there was this presumed attempt to either kidnap or kill me and that they had blocked it,” James stated.
Jame Wasserstrom said he was in charge of oversight of the public utilities on behalf of the UN administration of the province breakaway province of kosovo for several years.
BY ESSEYE MENGISTE
The Ethiopian Herald31 October 2021