WHO boss targeted by Ethiopia government-led smear campaign, media investigation reveals

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), was one of the faces of the Covid-19 pandemic. He would regularly make public statements during one of the worst crises ever experienced by the UN agency.

His prominent role also earned him repeated accusations of mismanagement, notably from former US president Donald Trump, who criticised the WHO’s lack of reaction and independence towards China.

On top of that, media reports revealed on Monday that the Ethiopian national was also dealing with a personal, professional and judicial smear campaign concocted by his own government.

The revelations come after a data leak from the Ethiopian Financial Intelligence Service (FIS) was obtained by the UK-based NGO Distributed Denial of Secrets. The information was then analysed by the Paris-based Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and passed on to Bloomberg, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Continent in South Africa, and the Swiss investigative journalism unit of Tamedia, publisher of Tribune de Genève and 24 Heures.

Surveillance and accusations of sexual abuse

Addis Ababa’s relentless efforts to tarnish Tedros’s reputation may be explained by events dating back to 3 November 2020. Civil war had broken out in the Tigray, pitting the federal government against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).

As a native of the breakaway region in the north of the country, Tedros had made repeated calls to the different parties to the conflict to find a peaceful solution, stating in October 2022 that there was only “a narrow window of opportunity to prevent genocide”.

His positions deeply displeased the authorities, who accused him of “actively lobbying the international community to condemn Ethiopia” and of “working to supply arms to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front”.

The government then tried to destabilise the WHO chief in several ways. According to Tribune de Genève, Tedros was “followed by unknown Ethiopian-looking people in Geneva and near his home in Vaud (Switzerland)”. One of his children, who is a student in the United Kingdom, also had his Ethiopian passport confiscated for eight months until the Swiss authorities granted him a pass that allowed him to join his father in Geneva following Tedros’s intervention.

According to Ethiopia’s FIS, “Tedros allegedly asked women for sexual favours in exchange for promotions when he was minister of health (2005-2012),” Tamedia reported. These accusations appear to be unfounded: people who have worked with him say they haven’t heard any rumours to this effect.

The FIS also accuses Tedros of “embezzlement and money laundering”, claiming he “purchased faulty Aids tests, (and) overpriced mosquito nets and medicines when he was minister of health between 2005 and 2012”. An investigation into the accusations was launched, but its current status is unknown.

Tedros denies the allegations and accuses Addis Ababa of conducting a “smear campaign”. As it stands, the allegations against him seem weak. One of his accusers is said to have been convicted of corruption. As for the Aids tests, the purchase was made after Tedros had left the Ministry of Health, and the order for mosquito nets was placed through the UN Children’s Fund, which says that Tedros never touched the money.

A modest lifestyle and an ‘ordinary villa’

Addis Ababa also claims that the WHO chief amassed large sums of money during his time at the Ministry of Health, an accusation that doesn’t have a leg to stand on. “The banks questioned during the investigation reported only insignificant amounts,” La Tribune de Genève reports, quoting a senior Unicef official who worked with Tedros during that period as saying that “he lived very humbly and was very careful not to get directly involved in commercial affairs”.

Currently, Tedros is paid the equivalent of CHF 233,000 per year as the head of WHO and lives in an “ordinary-looking” villa which he does not own.

In early 2022, the Ethiopian government used the proceedings initiated against Tedros as an argument to try to thwart his reelection. In a letter sent to the WHO’s executive committee, Ethiopia asked it “to investigate the director general to shed full light on his misconduct and violations of his professional and legal obligations”. The WHO did not respond to the request, given that Addis Ababa didn’t bother to substantiate its accusations.

Tedros was finally re-elected for a second five-year term at the helm of the organisation in May 2022. A fragile ceasefire has been in place in Tigray since November of the same year.