Ms. Kendrick’s attorneys said in a statement that We Are the Oceans has delivered on all of its promises to the UN and that “the fees paid to all WATO participants have always been lawful and fair. .”
Mr. Svensson, a former employee at the Office of Project Services, said his bosses were focused on arranging a performance of Miss Faremo’s song. He said she wanted to sing it in the UN cave hall during a 2017 conference on the ocean. They fly in a backing band from the UK, he said.
“Whatever it takes,” he remembers one supervisor saying.
Miss Faremo sings. However, Mr. Svensson said, a previous speaker ran so far over time that the hall was largely empty. Mr Svensson said he planned to include a video of the performance in a documentary he is working on about the UN.
“I agreed to sing this song due to my background as a singer,” Ms. Faremo said in her statement. Despite the delayed start, she said, “there was still a crowd in the hall.”
Loans are being scrutinized
The following year, 2018, the Office of Project Services announced that it was making its first loans. Over the next two years, according to United Nations records, it loaned $8.8 million to a company that invested in a wind farm in Mexico and $15 million to another company for projects. recycled energy. Another $35 million was spent building homes in Antigua, Ghana, India, Kenya and Pakistan, projects overseen by a third company.
Business records show all three companies appear to be connected to Mr. Kendrick. He owns two of them through a family office in the British territory of Gibraltar. The third company, which is based in Spain, does not list owners in its company records – but its directors are longtime associates of Mr. Kendrick, and its email address leads to a a company that Mr. Kendrick appears to half own. The UN auditors and Mr. Kendrick’s attorney both refer to the three companies as if they were a single entity.
According to public records, Mr. Kendrick is a 58-year-old Briton with a listed address in Spain and he has links with more than a dozen joint ventures in many countries, mainly in the construction sector. In the world. One video, from a project in Antigua in 2014, shows him saying: “I don’t build houses. I am inspired to build community”.
