OAS chief made 34 trips with an employee who was his partner

The secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) made 34 business trips with an employee with whom he had a long-standing intimate relationship, according to travel logs uncovered by The Associated Press.

The facts come as an external investigation is expected to conclude this month to determine whether Luis Almagro’s affair with a Mexican OAS employee two decades his junior violated the Washington-based organization’s code of ethics.

The trips together, all but one between July 2018 and December 2019, included a four-day visit to Oxford, England, to give a talk on Latin America, a newspaper editors conference in Cartagena, Colombia, and a trip to Miami to receive the “Executive Mastermind Latino” award.

Details of the trips were found in public reports buried on the organization’s website. These are reports that the Secretary General was asked to present quarterly to the OAS Permanent Council as part of a savings and transparency initiative approved by regional governments in 2016.

The cost of the trips for the OAS, which has suffered a deep budget crisis for years, is not clear. But at least 21 of the 34 trips were paid in part by the organization and the rest by the organizers of the events the two attended, or were not specified. In total, the two traveled 15 times together without any other OAS staff members present, according to records.

Almagro, through a spokesman, declined an AP request for an interview and did not explain why the two took so many business trips together, but denied any wrongdoing.

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