An unlikely background for a director general of the WHO

As detailed in our post, The Heinous Background of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus¹,

• Tedros Ghebreyesus (or Tedros as he prefers) is not a medical doctor despite the appellation. He is the first WHO director-general not to have a medical degree.
• As Ethiopia’s health minister, he is accused of covering up three cholera outbreaks, calling them cases of watery diarrhea.
• He was the third most important person in the terrorist organization, Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and is said to have played a key role in the kidnapping of a prominent dissident as well as other atrocities.

Tedros Strange Praise of China

Did you ever wonder why Tedros praised China’s transparency at the start of the outbreak and said that China’s response to Covid was a model for other nations? At that time everyone else has been criticizing China’s handling of the epidemic, hiding it from the rest of the world, and silencing whistleblowers.

Consider the following.

Tedros Helped Indebt Ethiopia to China

Ethiopia has borrowed billions from China, reportedly including more than $13 billion during Tedros’ tenure as foreign minister between 2012 and 2016.

An editorial published by the Hill in mid-March pointed out:

We note China’s connections to Tedros’s homeland of Ethiopia, now called East Africa’s ‘Little China’ because it has become China’s bridgehead to influence Africa and a key to China’s Belt and Road initiative there. Indeed, China has invested heavily in Ethiopia².

According to Yaakov Apelbaum of The Illustrated Primer, Tedros’s personal wealth had also been enhanced by China via foreign bank accounts³.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

China helped Tedros win the post of WHO Director-General

“Chinese diplomats had campaigned hard for the Ethiopian, using Beijing’s financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries,”…Washington Post columnist Frida Ghitis similarly noted at the time that China “worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world⁴.”

China garnered support for Tedros from developing countries

According to Sunday Times columnist, Rebecca Myers, Chinese diplomats campaigned for the then-Ethiopian Foreign Minister, using Beijing’s financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries. There were suggestions China would be pleased with any African or Asian heads for any UN agency because of the difficulties of dealing with more critical Westernized director-generals⁵.

This is why, shortly after his appointment to the position of director-general, he tapped Zimbabwe dictator and human rights abuser, Robert Mugabe, to become the UN’s “Goodwill Ambassador”.

Diplomats said his appointment was a political payoff from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — the WHO’s first African director-general — to China, a long-time ally of Mugabe, and the 50 or so African states that helped to secure Tedros’s election earlier this year⁶.

This is also why, shortly after the pandemic was declared, with all eyes pointing to China as the source of the virus, Tedros called it “misinformation”. At the Munich Security Conference, in mid-February 2020, when the majority of the cases of Covid-19 were in China and very few elsewhere, he said:

“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous.” And if we don’t tackle this, he went on, “we are headed down a dark path that leads nowhere but division and disharmony⁷.”

What happened in China with the discovery of the virus and how did the WHO respond?

Chinese authorities forced scientists who discovered the virus in December to destroy proof of the virus, U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times reported. The Chinese regime also punished doctors who tried to warn the public in the outbreak’s early stages and suppressed information about the virus online. A Chinese real estate mogul who criticized his government’s response has since gone missing.Approximately seven million people left Wuhan in January, spreading the virus all over China and all over the world, before China restricted travel to Wuhan on Jan. 22, The New York Times reported Sunday. One study found that “if interventions in [China] could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier, cases could have been reduced by 66 percent, 86 percent and 95 percent respectively – significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease.”

Tedros, however, had nothing but praise for the way China handled the pandemic, using it as an example that the rest of the world should follow. On February 14, the WHO tweeted: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.” On January 30, shortly after returning from a trip to Beijing and meeting with Xi, he tweeted: “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response”⁸. That was certainly true, but it wasn’t the standard the world wanted to see

In mid-February, members of the WHO emergency committee expected to be able to go to China to discover the source of the outbreak.

“If we don’t know the source then we’re equally vulnerable in the future to a similar outbreak,” Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergency director, had said that week in Geneva. “Understanding that source is a very important next step.”What the team members did not know was that they would not be allowed to investigate the source at all. Despite Dr. Ryan’s pronouncements, and over the advice of its emergency committee, the organization’s leadership had quietly negotiated terms that sidelined its own experts⁹.

In an effort to deflect criticism from China, the WHO may also have enabled the spread of the virus. Tedros permitted flights between Ethiopia and China, saying that closing travel can increase fear and stigma with little public health benefit. This was at a time when 59 other air carriers from 44 different countries halted flights to and from China¹⁰.

Tedros and the Gates Foundation

Tedros has also been supported for the position of director-general by Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the other WHO donors that he funds, basically controls the agenda of the WHO¹¹.

From 2009 to 2011 Tedros Ghebreyesus was also the Director of the Global Fund, a program to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, initiated by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the head of the UNAIDS Program Coordinating Board …

In a profile published in April 2010, The Lancet reported that he was “a household name at the Global Fund Secretariat” and that his achievements led to naming Ethiopia as an exemplary high-performing country.

A surprising conclusion, when one finds out that during his leadership, the use of international aid funds he supervised was very questionable.In 2012, an audit[19] of the Global Fund looked at the expenses of the aids, tuberculosis, and malaria program in several African countries, including Ethiopia who had received $1.3 billion in grants.

Inspector General John Parson, who was in charge of the audit, revealed a flagrant lack of transparency and numerous shortcomings in the accounting and management of the funds, to the point of suggesting a minimum payback of $7 million to the organization.

Above all, the investigation also showed a huge discrepancy between the results presented and the reality observed in Ethiopia during the field visits.

For example, 77% of the medical centers built did not have drinking water and 32% did not have sanitary facilities. Only 14% had a microscope or a delivery table, and only 12% had a pharmacy.

The report should have led to a series of measures ensuring more transparency and efficacy in the management of the program but, instead, the Inspector General and his findings were dismissed.

Obviously, good relationships with the leaders of African governments had a far greater importance.

It was also obvious to some of the WHO member states that Tedros did not have their best interests in mind, but the interests of the Gates Foundation.

When the candidates were interviewed before the votes, the Brazilian Ambassador asked Tedros how he intended to “represent the voice of developing countries by proposing a program that was much more aligned with the priorities of the countries of the North,” hereby referring to his approach of health through security (pandemic preparedness), and to treating ‘equality’ in terms of “coverage” (vaccines), rather than in the development of universal health systems (for example medical infrastructure and training or access to water).

He also remarked that Tedros had not proposed anything concrete in terms of sustainable development for vulnerable countries.

In fact, this “northern agenda” was very much aligned with the priorities of the Global Health Security Agenda, promoted by WHO’s four main funders and influencers: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (14%), the United States (24%), the U.K. (11%) and GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization which was again mainly funded by Gates (17%), the U.S. (11%) and the U.K. (31%)¹².

Tedros was also a Board Member of GAVI¹³ of which the Gates Foundation was a founding partner and continues to heavily fund the organization¹⁴.

Bill Gates and the WHO

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is the largest contributor to the WHO and the Foundation supports many other WHO donors. This essentially gives Gates the ability to control activities of the WHO, even if they are not consistent with the WHO mission, since non-member donors are allowed to earmark their contributions.

Gate’s relationship with the WHO began with the former WHO Director-General Margaret Chan¹⁵. Perhaps that’s why she lamented:

…  such influence is the de facto determinant of  priority setting of the WHO: … “(m)y budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests.”

Today,

… the BMGF together with GAVI contributed a collective 20.3%, including Rotary, a collective 23.6%, and even more when you include all the other earmarked voluntary contributions from organizations with which the Gates Foundation shares its financial largess. In this way, Gates has acquired enormous control over the WHO’s priority setting, more than any other member state including the US while still a member¹⁶.

Bill Gates and China

It is interesting to note, that Bill Gates is a huge supporter of China; he partners with the Chinese government in the areas of health, agriculture, computer technologies, and nuclear energy. In 2007,  when the Foundation opened up an office in China; it declared:

Since the inauguration of our China office in 2007, we have been focused on unlocking that potential in a way that benefits China and the rest of the world. In working towards this goal, we continue to support China in overcoming domestic challenges, leverage China’s growing innovation capacity to supply high-quality, affordable health products to those in need, and assist China in becoming a stronger partner for global health and development¹⁷.

The Gates Foundation has helped to fund international cooperation projects of the Center for Global Public Health of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention¹⁸. In 2015, the Gates signed a memorandum of agreement with CNNC [China National Nuclear Corporation] to build a miniature nuclear power plant.

The nuclear power startup is trying to build a new type of nuclear reactor to harness the power of depleted uranium …

In December of that year he was one of ten “foreign experts” in engineering and technology who were elected as new members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE). The CAE is the People’s Republic of China’s elite society of technology professionals who have proven their service to the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Communist State²¹.

While defending China’s problematic response to the Coronavirus pandemic and attempting to curb discussion about it, he had no compunction about castigating President Trump for his response.

Tedros and Bill Clinton

In January 2006, Tedros, as Health Minister of Ethiopia, signed an agreement with the Clinton Foundation to expand their HIV/AIDS partnership.

“The support from Clinton Foundation is coming at a time when we are scaling up our fight against HIV/AIDS very aggressively in all three fronts: prevention, treatment and care and support,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the Minister of Health of Ethiopia. “The agreement with the Clinton Foundation is also unique in that it includes capacity building of the health system which is very crucial in sustaining the fight as indicated in our strategic plan. I would like to use this opportunity to thank President Clinton for his commitment to fight HIV/AIDS.”Ethiopia has been a member of the Clinton Foundation procurement consortium since August 2004. The procurement consortium comprises over 50 countries in the developing world with access to the Clinton Foundation’s reduced prices for anti-retroviral drugs and diagnostic testing supplies. Ethiopia is the sixth African country in which the Clinton Foundation will have a permanent team²³.

In 2007, while Tedros was Health Minister of Ethiopia, the Clinton Foundation received a $100,000,000 commitment from the Lundin Group for its Clinton Guistra Sustainable Growth Initiative. The Lundin Group makes its money from “blood minerals”, minerals allegedly mined in war zones or sold as commodities to help finance political insurrections or warlords”.  Among the countries with which the Lundin Group cut deals with warlords was Ethiopia²⁴. Apelbaum, of The Illustrated Primer,  alleges that Tedros brokered the donation from the Lundin Group to the Clinton Foundation²⁵.

At the 2014 Opportunity: Africa Conference, Bill Clinton commended Tedros saying:

“The Health Minister of Ethiopia, now the Foreign Minister, is one of the ablest public servants I’ve ever worked with. You would all be very comfortable if he became the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the United States. He’s a really able man²⁶.”

Tedros was also a speaker at the 2015 Clinton Foundation Global Initiative and a panelist on a conversation about advancing the status of women and girls over the next 20 years. This was in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the 1995 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing.

Chelsea Clinton spoke with Chairman and CEO of Xerox Corporation Ursula Burns in a one-on-one conversation which preceded a panel featuring participants such as Executive Chairman of The Estée Lauder Companies William Lauder and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus²⁷.

The Clinton Foundation and the WHO

In 2004, the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) entered into an agreement with the WHO to

… jointly provide technical assistance on scaling up national HIV/AIDS care and treatment programs to developing country Member States of WHO….

The agreement will also help accelerate the pace at which countries receiving funds from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the World Bank can access CHAI-brokered agreements for reduced prices.

“Because CHAI is a leader in negotiating breakthrough pricing for HIV/AIDS medicines and diagnostics, and WHO is the leading global authority in public health, our collaboration will significantly advance the goal of providing antiretroviral treatment to three million people by 2005,” said Ira Magaziner, Chairman of the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative²⁸.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4870559/user-clip-clinton-foundation-acting-agent

This arrangement was illegal, as explained by Mr. Doylle, a Clinton Foundation whistleblower in the clip above and in this archived video; a US non-profit may not act as a broker for a foreign government or foreign company. The Foundation was not held accountable²⁹.

The Clintons and China

The Clintons have a decades-long history of business and political relationships with Chinese individuals. The DNC illegally received donations from China while Bill was in the White House. Although these donations were returned, the offense was an impeachable one.

Chinagate, more than any other scandal, should have led to the impeachment, and removal, of Bill Clinton from office. At least six individuals were believed to have been used by the Chinese to influence the 1996 elections. Despite the fact that the illegal donations were returned, Janet Reno was criticized for never appointing an independent prosecutor for the Chinagate scandal.

…

Bill and Hillary Clinton continued this pattern of getting foreign donations from unethical businessmen with the Clinton Foundation³⁰.

Under Vice President Bush, China, previously ousted from the global economy, received observer status at the  General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the predecessor to the World Trade Organization. However, it was only after Clinton normalized trade relations between the US and China in 2000, that China was enabled to become a founding member of the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Not only did this result in millions of US jobs lost to China, but it also paved the way for “the legitimizing of the brutal and corrupt Communist Chinese government³¹.”

Conclusion

We can now see how the personal and political interests of an American millionaire and billionaire and the Chinese Communist Party have enabled terrorist Tedros to become the Director-General of the WHO.

Why Gates, Clinton, and China were allowed to gain so much unfettered power is a question we should all be asking.

Featured image: A petition against electing Tedros to the position of WHO director general – https://www.change.org/p/we-oppose-tedros-adhanom-s-candidacy-for-director-general-of-who