ROME– Samba-dancing executive Telma Viale’s bid to be FAO HR chief failed but the statuesque Salvadorean is spearheading a pricy headhunting firm the UN agency is using to recruit honchos, FAO sources say.

 Italian Insider reported in 2012 how striking Ms Viale was being groomed by FAO DG José Graziano da Silva to run the Human Resources department of the Rome-based agency but her bid for the job fizzled out amid concern over a video she produced on You tube that apparently climaxed with her stripping to the buff.

“FAO HR now has hired Viale's Dublin-based company, SRI Executive Search, to headhunt candidates for the D2 post in NRC and probably also for the D2 post in EST,” said a well-placed source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“At the very least, this is an ethically questionable procedure,” said the source, “FAO is circumventing its own hiring standards and is trying to camouflage the direct hiring through dishing out a contract to a company that is run by the person in question.”

“In any normal hiring procedure of an FAO Division, HR would immediately stop such an attempt and, if they didn't pick it up, Audit would do so at a later stage and punish the procedure.”

“More importantly perhaps, this raises the question why HR cannot do the hiring themselves. Are they incompetent, or at least deemed incompetent by senior management?”

“Why do FAO member countries pay large sums of money to Telma Viale's SRI, if she merely does what HR is paid for in the first place? They seem to pay FAO twice for the same job, perhaps without knowing.”

 SRI Executive Search and FAO’s pres officer Enrique Yeves did not respond when e-mailed by Italian Insider to comment.