Nice work

The taxpayer is being stung so this Lord can live in Admiralty House

Wednesday, 7th November 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.

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.

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carol scott

November 11th, 2007 12:18am Report this comment

Gordon Brown does not ever admit mistakes.

Maggie Black

November 13th, 2007 6:48pm Report this comment

David Lorraine is right. Malloch Brown is exceptional, and people who have worked with him at the UN have the greatest respect for him, even when they have not been personally well-served by his reforms and cost cutting decisions and have been bruised by some encounters. The idea that he would describe himself as doing God's work is preposterous, but I can well imagine that he would find a journalist only interested in a story about 'scandal and perks for top UN officials', when there are so many major problems in the world to address and so many difficulties in doing so, infuriating and a complete waste of his time. And now he's here, after 25 odd years in the interantional system, almost all of it at very high level. That's very good for us, and for others in the world. So he hasn't worked within the British political system before, and that is bound to mean some toes are trodden on and nuances missed. It is one of the anomalies of our House of Lords system that someone can be appointed to senior office in that way. Because he comes from outside the Westminster village, is it really necessary to write loaded sneers against him? It sounds as though insiders at Westminster, including journalists, are just determined to carp at someone who is not 'one of us', in a familiar phrase.

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