Senior Analyst @RIElcano | Research Fellow, Middle East Institute,
@Columbia | PhD @UniofOxford
José S. Vericat
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(he did indeed bring in the bacon, how he did it and for what purpose is the question) and his own merged indistinguishably. All that needed large amounts of money for 1st class tickets, luxury hotels, and entertainment (at the best restaurants anywhere and everywhere).
José S. Vericat
Behind the peace industry hides a very profitable business, and many people working in it--often with dubious credentials and an absence of any real field experience--are fundamentally driven by profit.
To paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli, "Peace is a career". END 🧵
Larsen's salary did not include the great expenses that were covered for him. I remember admin staff talking about his "office" as a black hole of money. Larsen was constantly traveling around the Middle East engaging in back-room wheeling and dealing, where the Institute's gain
I hope to be able write something myself where I can properly address the more substantial questions and what they illustrate.
One small correction: I didnt spend "a few years" in war zones and refugee camps before arriving at IPI. I spent a full decade.
I have been the only former employee willing to speak publicly for this piece; it surprises me how colleagues are terrified for their careers. In any case, the material here is very vanilla and all the quotes attributed to me of little real interest.
As this article reports Larsen earned around $250,000, when he arrived at IPI in 2005, and within six years his salary doubled, that is $0.5M per year. While at IPI I remember one colleague saying how salaries of senior staff were "equivalent to the private sector".
One senior staff, with a particularly large dose of integrity, left the organization and went into retirement because they felt they couldn't justify their salary (in hindsight, I think they also had found out about the Epstein link and wanted nothing of it).
This an interesting investigation into Terje Larsen's work at IPI, before his relation with Epstein became public and a scandal, in which I am extensively cited:
@vgnett.bsky.social
www.vg.no/nyheter/i/zO...
The investigation into Terje Larsen has prompted research into the finances of the "peace industry": organizations like IPI which are formally non-profit organizations but senior staff receive financial benefits equivalent to for-profit companies 🧵
www.vg.no/nyheter/i/zO...
