ROME –- The FAO Human Resources department's Officer in Charge, Serge Nakouzi, was investigated for alleged workplace harassment in 2021 by the UN agency’s respected Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which recommended in a formal report made in 2022 that the Lebanese dandy face disciplinary proceedings for his mobbing behaviour on the ground that it was harmful to a member of staff, diplomatic sources said Wednesday.

 The case against bearded, natty Nakouzi, who has applied for a D 2 post to become HR Director of the FAO, subsequently was downgraded mysteriously to be classed as just an administrative offence, meaning under the UN system that he risked receiving only a written reprimand for allegedly harassing a female member of staff in the FAO Cairo office who filed a complaint against him, the sources, who saw the report, told the Italian Insider.

 The dilution of the charges from the recommendation by the OIG could have been due to intervention either by the FAO legal office or by the HR department itself, the sources added. If the recommendation that he face disciplinary charges had been accepted then he could have been suspended without pay and critically would have been ineligible to apply for a senior post such as the head of HR, they added.

 The FAO Director General Qu Dongyu has been poised since January to appoint the wily Levantine as head of the agency’s troubled human resources division after the transfer in short order of outspoken former HR director Greet de Leeuw to Budapest as head of the FAO shared service centre, FAO sources say.

 Indeed there was some surprise in well-informed FAO circles that Qu decided to advertise the post of HR director rather than using his prerogative to appoint Nakouzi without competition, the sources added. Some saw the decision as an effort to cover the agency against possible recriminations should Nakouzi turn out to be a disaster, while supporters of the greasy Lebanese polyglot have warned him to be on good behaviour to avoid blotting his copybook again.

 Ms De Leeuw evidently irked the Chinese DG by challenging a raft of questionable nepotistic appointments such as the promotion of Maria Grassi, daughter of the Argentine head of the IAEA in Vienna, to a P3 position, a meteoric elevation from being a mere consultant in the cabinet of the DG.

 A polyglot and cosmopolitan Lebanese, Mr Nakouzi speaks and is fluent in as many languages as English, Arabic, French, Armenian, Italian, Spanish, German, with a smattering of Hausa, Turkish and even a "professional knowledge" of Latin, according to his Linked In profile. 

 There is also speculation that Nakouzi’s transfer to Rome from the field, where he was dispatched by the former DG José Graziano da Silva, has been the result of strong lobbying by former FAO assistant director general and Pakistani diplomat Khalid Mehboob, who remains a highly influential grey eminence at FAO despite being in his late 80s, well-informed sources say.

 Since taking over as OIC at HR in January, Nakouzi has insisted on approving all appointments and contracts personally, creating a bottleneck in HR administration as he spends most of his time schmoozing with director level executives whose ranks he he hopes to join.

 Against the background of questions arising from his serious investigation and a subsequent cover up of the affari, however, FAO watchers say they are concerned that his eventual appointment to be HR director could cause serious reputational damage to the Organization.

 The HR leadership has been a weak spot of the FAO in recent years. One of Qu's first actions on taking office as DG was to dismiss the slimy Peruvian HR director who he inherited from the previous Brazilian regime, who was notorious for sexual harassment of would be employees. 

 jf