World Health Syria boss spent thousands on dancing, dining and luxury cars

The WHO investigates claims its Syria office funded gifts to Assad, organised a $17,500 dinner party and forced staff to dance.

Outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus. It has reportedly earned $US70 million from the UN in the past eight years. Picture: AFP

The World Health Organisation is investigating claims that its office in Syria funded gifts to employees of the Assad regime, organised a $US11,000 ($17,500) dinner party in the middle of the pandemic and demanded staff train for a flash-mob dance routine.

A dossier of alleged abuses ranging from mundane accusations of thousands of dollars spent in expensive hotels and restaurants to the eccentric entertainments laid on at the whim of its Damascus boss was passed to the Associated Press news agency.

The boss, Akjemal Magtymova, 54, a Turkmen gynaecologist who is a longstanding United Nations official, lived in a luxury suite at the Four Seasons Hotel with two bathrooms costing $US450 a night, four times the rate of rooms occupied by other staff. WHO is a UN agency.

Akjemal Magtymova, WHO Damascus chief. Source: WHO

She also used the hotel, which has earned $US70 million from the UN in the past eight years, for expensive dinners. One, last May, for 50 guests and featuring beef satay, fried goat cheese with truffle oil croquettes, sriracha chicken sliders and seasonal mocktails, cost $US11,000.

The Four Seasons Damascus is no longer managed by the international Four Seasons organisation.

The Syrian health minister gave a speech and a production company was hired to record the event. Though the dinner was supposedly to honour the Year of Health and Care Workers, many tributes were paid to Ms Magtymova, who had just received a leadership award from Tufts University, Massachusetts, where she studied.

There was also a staff party and “cake-eating ceremony” on UN day last October. Ms Magtymova’s office posted video of staff performing a special dance routine, to widespread fury. Syria was suffering a major coronavirus wave at the time and no one in the video was wearing a mask or social distancing.

Ms Magtymova defended the video to staff, writing that “we have done something really out of [the] box: we dared to shine”. The video was removed on WHO orders.

Dancing played a major part in Ms Magtymova’s management system. In December 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the 100 staff in Syria were ordered to practise and perform a flash-mob dance. It was inspired by the Jerusalema challenge, a social media craze set to the song by the South African performer Master KG.

“Kindly note that we want you to listen to the song, train yourself for the steps and shoot you dancing over the music to be part of our global flash mob dance video,” a locally based WHO official wrote to all its Syria staff.

Ms Magtymova herself sent a link to an instructional YouTube video and was filmed taking part. She was pleased with the outcome. Staff were filmed dancing in medicine warehouses and UN offices, often wearing WHO tabards. Some were “very good looking and beautiful people”, she wrote.

Syrians shop at a market in the capital Damascus this month. Picture: AFP

The allegations will fuel concerns about standards of oversight in the agency, to say nothing of the way the UN engages with regimes in some of the countries where it operates.

An unnamed WHO official in the country complained that Ms Magtymova hired the relatives of regime apparatchiks, including some accused of human rights violations. “Vulnerable Syrian people are losing a lot due to favouritism, frauds and scandals instigated and supported by [her], which is] pushing donors away,” the official wrote.

Other officials alleged that under her watch the organisation paid for computer servers and laptops for the ministry of health, as well as gold coins and expensive cars as gifts. A staff member received $US20,000 for medicines, despite there being no request for them.

Ms Magtymova told the agency she was barred from answering their questions and described the allegations against her as defamatory. She is on extended leave. The WHO said it was conducting a “complex and protracted” inquiry.

The Times