But this wasn’t the first time Begashaw was accused of misconduct by employees, nor was it new that employees said they went to leadership for help. In fact, former employees told VICE World News that complaints about Begashaw have been made to upper management, and Sachs, for almost 10 years. Even after the investigation into Begashaw finally began in Rwanda, former employees said, investigators at the auditing firm KPMG were not thorough, and not independent enough from the organization itself. Begashaw’s story, and that of the Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa, is not just one of alleged misconduct and mismanagement. It’s about how would-be do-gooders may have failed to do their due diligence, and ignored the whistleblowers along the way. Shortly after becoming the director of the Millennium Development Goals Center for Eastern and Southern Africa in Nairobi, an employee said, Belay Begashaw quite literally wanted the largest desk in the office. It was 2009, and he had recently met his new subordinates. CJ Jones, a former high-level employee for the center, remembered it well: “One day he came down to my office, and asked where I got my desk. I said it was in my office when I moved in, I didn’t know. [Begashaw] then sent his assistant to measure my desk, because my desk was bigger than his.” Then, she remembered, he bought an even bigger one. From there, Jones said, “it went downhill.”Former employees told VICE World News that complaints about Begashaw have been made to upper management, and Sachs, for almost 10 years.
Begashaw had little to prove: He had earned his bachelor’s degree at Addis Ababa University, and later an MPA from the Kennedy School at Harvard University and a phD from Texas A&M in agricultural policy. At some point during his career, Begashaw had changed his working name from “Belay Ejigu” to “Belay Begashaw.” He also hadn't actually been the Minister of Agriculture, but rather, briefly, an acting minister. It was, nevertheless, an impressive resume.“We were made to feel like little players in the board game of Belay’s life.”
“He was a stop gap of getting information,” Hufft said. “Of being able to communicate with teams or implement programming.” As the years passed by, communication deteriorated further. When Hubers or another staff member would find out about some inconsistency in the budget or reporting, and ask Begashaw to address it, he never did. “I don’t know where the money went,” Hubers said. “In one case a team leader for a project in [Uganda] had money disappearing, product disappearing, donations disappearing like crazy from his site. An entire warehouse of grain missing. Begashaw said he would investigate it, but we never got any real answers on what happened there.” Like in Rwanda, Begashaw’s behavior in Nairobi was an open secret. Jones herself said she reported Begashaw’s behavior to upper management, and spent many hours consoling colleagues he bullied. “We took it up many many, many times. We always got told to go away,” Jones said. “They knew when he was in Nairobi that he was like this and no one did anything to him.”Like in Rwanda, Begashaw’s behavior in Nairobi was an open secret.
According to Hubers, “Jeff either never responded [to complaints about Begashaw], or said he would look into it and then didn’t. There were some people that I know who left very unhappily from the Nairobi office, and made it abundantly clear to anybody who would listen, Jeff and other board members, that there was a problem here, and it just got ignored. Jeff is a contentious person, but he hates confrontation.” More than once, Hubers added, he told Sachs what was going on: “We had many conversations,” he said. “Everybody was telling him the same thing. That Belay was a problem from day one.”“Everybody was telling him the same thing. That Belay was a problem from day one.”
As detailed in Hufft’s memo, there were also many questions about Begashaw’s accounting and financial reporting. (For example, as documented in VICE World News’s previous reporting, the memo alleged that Begashaw pocketed “private school subsidies for his children of $25,000 and $26,500 in, respectively, 2017 and 2018, even though they attended public school in New Jersey … In one instance, it states that a $50,000 grant to the center from U.N. Women was never used for the intended project, and instead, 'many of the activities falsely represented as having been achieved or as being ongoing in the September 2018 Board documents are, to this date, still not occurring.'”) According to Sempeho, Begashaw “cooked the numbers,” while “squandering different opportunities,” and would force staff to write editorials and academic articles before publishing them under his name and not sharing credit. “He wanted to appear as if he was the brain behind everything, which was wrong,” Sempeho said. “I don’t want to use the word dictator,” he added, “but maybe it fits the bill. It was big man syndrome.”After a year at the center, Hufft realized that Begashaw had created “a culture of fear and abuse.”
“How wrong I got it,” Hufft told VICE World News. “I misjudged people I thought would do the right thing. I did the hard part by writing and delivering the memo, I thought them acting on it would be a foregone conclusion. They actually had a fiduciary responsibility to do so.” Instead, in September, Hufft said, she found out on a call with Sachs that he hadn’t discussed the memo with Youssoufou. When Hufft pressed him, and said she expected an investigation, she said Sachs told her “I know,” but then asked why she didn’t “just leave the center.” To which she said, “Why do I have to leave the center?”When Hufft pressed him, and said she expected an investigation, she said Sachs told her “I know,” but then asked why she didn’t “just leave the center.”
Nevertheless, Hufft still wanted an investigation. After waiting months, Hufft sent another email to Sachs with the memo, copying other members of the board in February 2020. She received quick responses, and an email from Sachs that read, “Thank you for this letter and comprehensive update. The situation absolutely requires an investigation … This matter should not rest until there is appropriate follow up and I will do my part to ensure that occurs.” A few days later, Hufft received an email from Sachs’s wife Sonia, who wrote, “I just found out the full extent of the malfeasances and also your abrupt and injurious termination. I worry about your and [Hufft’s son’s] wellbeing and want to know how I can help. When you have time please call. Of course Jeff also wants to talk to you and has written you a request to call.” (Sonia Sachs has not responded to repeated requests for comment via email from VICE World News.)“As soon as the complaint came in, which I took and take very seriously, I suggested to Ms. Ashley Hufft that she contact the co-chairs of the Board, as I am one of twenty or so Board members and was not and am not engaged in day-to-day operations or supervision of the center in any manner … I did not hear back from Ashley Hufft again during 2019 on any single occasion as far as I recall. She did not request any further action on my part nor did she inform me in any manner that matters were not proceeding. In fact, the next I heard about this, I believe, was in February 2020 when I learned that Ashley had been dismissed by Dr. Begashaw in the Fall of 2019 and was no longer in Rwanda. I immediately called the representative of the Co-Chair [Youssoufou], who explained to me indeed that as the representative of the Co-Chair that there had been no follow-up action and that she had not tried to reach out to me. I advised her how important it was to proceed, and how sorry I was that the follow-up had been so much delayed…I urged the co-chairs to hire an outside firm as soon as possible, and the Government of Rwanda confirmed that they would proceed in this manner. With the Covid-19 disruptions, this took many weeks, probably two months from April to June or thereabouts to make arrangements.”
In some cases, former employees said they only received email questionnaires and no follow-up calls. One former employee who wished to remain anonymous due to fears of retribution was asked just one question after years of working with Begashaw. “I know KPMG is a fantastic auditing firm,” Hufft said. “But this particular KPMG office should not have led the investigation in my view.” KPMG in Rwanda was the center’s external auditor before the investigation, and as the auditor they never approached Hufft with questions during her time as general counsel. “That’s highly unusual,” Hufft added. Many of the former employees also doubted that the investigation would remain confidential, as it seemed like, according to Hufft and other employees, certain members of the center were friendly with the auditors. In an email from Hufft to Sachs, Youssoufou, and other board members on July 30, 2020, Hufft wrote about the slow process of the investigation, and the fact that she and the other whistleblowers that signed the memo had yet to be contacted by KPMG, in addition to the fact that while KPMG had audited the center before, they never raised concerns (many of which were detailed in Hufft’s memo) to the board. Hufft also raised issues on the independence and thoroughness of the investigation. (KPMG did not reply to repeated requests for comment, and their global office told VICE World News that they were unable to provide a comment until they heard from their Rwanda outpost.)In response to her letter, Sachs replied to Hufft and other members of the board denying culpability. “I would like to make clear from the start that I am not leading or guiding this process, and have felt and expressed to Ashley from the very start that I cannot do so from afar as a single board member without the authority, responsibility, or institutional capacity to carry out the very important and requisite investigation,” he wrote. “On every occasion that anyone involved in this process has contacted me, I have urged an urgent, prompt, and thorough independent investigation under the auspice of the Board.” Still, the process was stalled for over a year. Other former leaders at Millennium Promise, from when Begashaw was in Nairobi, have denied culpability and tried to distance themselves as well. In an email to VICE World News, Jeffrey Walker, a former board chair of Millennium Promise, said he didn’t “know Belay.” (At the very least, they were both present at Millennium Promise’s partner meeting in New York in September 2010.)“The investigation was not properly done, and you could see the team was super inexperienced.”