ROME – FAO watchers have been whiling away the long winter evenings by following the nepotistic fortunes of Filippo Pucci, son of a former longstanding FAO Legal Counsel, who was recruited by the legal unit of the sister agency World Food Programme when his father exercised supervisory functions over the WFP legal department, UN sources say. Avv.
Insider reporters
16 Dec 2025
INSIDER NEWSDESK
ROME – World Food Programme employees from Arab countries working in the WFP Haiti country office were replaced with black African staffers evidently because “they were not black enough,” as part of a purge by the Kenyan woman country director and her deputy, former employees claim.
“In Haiti the international staff were initially more or less balanced,” a UN source said. “there were two Chinese only but the rest were split in white and black,” the source added.
15 Dec 2025
Insider reporters
ROME – The FAO office in Saudi Arabia invites candidates to apply for professional posts in the sand-swept Kingdom and puts highly qualified applicants through numerous hoops but then downgrades the vacancies to consultancies so that they can hire Saudi or other Arab nationals who are cronies recommended by the Saudi government, according to one frustrated applicant.
15 Dec 2025
JAN FILIPOWICZ
ROME – UN investigators from New York have opened a probe into management of its staff in Haiti where the Kenyan country director, Wanja Kaaria, allegedly hired a constellation of African cronies without due recruitment process and used funds questionably as if the UN operation was “her personal kingdom,” WFP sources say.
15 Dec 2025
JAN FILIPOWICZ
ROME – Despite budget cuts by the Trump administration, many WFP staffers are delighted at the US president’s stand against DEI and what they see as the hope it holds for return to sanity in the face of nepotism of the kind exposed by Italian Insider at the WFP Haiti country office, WFP sources say. “Some of the DEI is very sensible, even logical and fair,” a veteran WFP senior executive said, “but it has got out of control and has been hijacked for their own ends by group
12 Dec 2025
Michael LaPointe
Rome-The National Museum’s new exhibition, “Submerged Memories, the bronzes of the Valentinian Bridge,” highlights statues discovered at the bottom of the Tiber almost 150 years ago. The footbridge Ponte Sisto now crosses the river at the same point and replaced the ancient Roman bridge built by Emperor Valentinian.
12 Dec 2025
Philip Willan
ROME — An estate agent and an insurance broker from Monza make for an incongruous pair of Russian spies, but according to prosecutors they were working on an ingenious plan to provide Russian intelligence with videos recorded on taxi dash-cams, create a network of safe houses in Milan and identify the city’s “grey zones” not covered by security cameras.
12 Dec 2025
JAN FILIPOWICZ
ROME – ROME – ICCROM donor nations stopped short Friday of firing the cultural quango’s beleaguered director general, Aruna Francesca Gujral, but voted for its programme and budget to be modified and presented in three months at a special General Assembly on line, ICCROm sources said.
12 Dec 2025
Darcie Peters
VENICE -- A 47-year-old Spanish tourist is under investigation after allegedly attempting to avoid paying for a lavish 700 euro meal at the Chat Qui Rit near St Mark’s Square, prompting staff to alert the Carabinieri, police said.
9 Dec 2025