ROME – The FAO Director General, José Graziano da Silva, has broken up an “immoral earnings” ring  involving a number of staff at the UN agency, FAO sources said.

 The Brazilian director general “took disciplinary measures” to smash what is understood to have been in effect a prostitution racket at the Rome-based food agency, acting on information provided to him when he took office last year. Few details were available but it is understood the racket involved members of  the messenger corps at the agency and staff and delegates from African countries.

 FAO employs some 100 messengers to deliver files and memoranda around its sprawling headquarters, many of them well-educated young ladies who use the job as a way into better jobs and a sought-after tax free career path.

 There was no immediate comment from the FAO press office when asked about the alleged affair by Italian insider.

 On Thursday fleets of buses will ferry delegates from the FAO Conference under way this week to the Vatican where they will have an audience with Pope Francis, providing delegates with opportunities for the sacrament of reconciliation.

 Italy's La Sette television channel recently interviewed a woman claiming to run a call girl racket involving female university students. "When there is an FAO summit on hunger in the world there are never enough girls to go around," she claimed.