But inside the Washington-based organization, The affair is longstanding and an open secret, making some of his 600 employees uncomfortable and intimidated when interacting with the boss’s alleged mistress. according to half a dozen people, including current and former employees, as well as regional diplomats.
Two employees said they were seen kissing by the pool at the OAS General Assembly in Medellin, Colombia, in 2019.. Another individual described them holding hands in a meeting at his office in the summer of 2020. A former US official said OAS members told him the relationship was what led to Almagro’s separation from his second wife. in 2020.
In question are the OAS ethics guidelines that say staff members should not have intimate relationships with colleagues in one way that interferes “with the performance of their duties or that harms others in the workplace”. It establishes that, if there is a link, a manager or superior must withdraw from any supervisory role of the other person or that benefits the person in some way.
Almagro, 59, declined repeated media requests for comment, but a spokesman for the OAS denied that Almagro had been the woman’s supervisor and said that since 2019 he has worked in the OAS Secretariat for Strengthening Democracy.
“Almagro never participated in any decision about the interests of this official within the OAS,” he said. the spokesman Gonzalo Espariz in an email to AP.
However, in several online biographies, as well as photos with Almagro from March, some of them posted on OAS social media accounts, the woman is described as a “adviser” or sometimes “senior adviser” to the secretary general.
After the AP contacted the woman on her OAS email, her LinkedIn profile was changed to reflect that she no longer serves as an adviser to the organization. The OAS press office said he has been on unpaid leave since June and did not say why.
The woman, who is not named at the request of the OAS and because the investigation is ongoing, also declined to comment but she was quoted at length about her “very deep and very intense” connection with her boss in a biography of Almagro published in late 2020 in her native Uruguay.
“I always tell him. ‘I’m smarter because it didn’t take me more than thirty-eight years to get to know you, it took you like fifty-something,’” she told the book’s authors, Gonzalo Ferreira and Martin Natalevich.
In the biography entitled “Luis Almagro does not ask for forgiveness”, the head of the OAS said that “the female sex” had been a “very important engine” that fueled his professional ambitions throughout the years.
The investigation’s revelations come less than two weeks after another regional organization, the Inter-American Development Bankfired its president former White House official Mauricio Claver-Caronefor similar accusations of favoring a subordinate with whom he allegedly had an intimate relationship.
Unlike the IDB, which hired an outside law firm to investigate Claver-Carone’s relationship with his chief of staff, the OAS appears to be handling the matter internally.
The OAS Inspector General told the AP that he decided to investigate the matter after Almagro submitted a vaguely detailed anonymous tip on June 3 alleging an intimate relationship with an unidentified staff member. As of the last internal watchdog activity report on July 31, the matter was called “Alleged Misconduct by a Senior OAS Official.”
Almagro was chosen to head the OAS with almost unanimous support in 2015 after serving as foreign minister in Uruguay’s leftist government. And throughout his tenure he has faced questions about his leadership style.
From the beginning, Almagro made common cause with the United States in opposing the socialist governments of Cuba and Venezuela, and once even imitated the president’s assertion donald trump that he would not rule out the use of military force to remove the Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduroa position that was even rebuked by conservative US allies.
Almagro also played a key role in the Bolivian elections that culminated in a coup d’état after the OAS denounced irregularities that were later questioned by American academics. As a consequence of this election, the then Bolivian president and candidate, Evo Moraleshad to leave the country.
At the OAS General Assembly in Lime This week, Almagro defended the creation of “safe spaces” for women and girls in the Americas, sending out a tweet that showed him surrounded by two dozen women. “We must remain steadfast in our commitment to dismantle the remnants of the patriarchy that only seek to stifle the talent, knowledge and experience of women.”
Source: Ambito
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