MORE ABOUT BARBARA ADAGBLENYA: MALTA’S FILM TAX REBATE SCAM WITH NORDICITY’S COMPLICITY
by a Blog Reader
In a previous article, we showed how within less than 24 hours after we published information about the three senior analysts at Nordicity, grossly unqualified for the job, the firm created a fourth one on its website by upgrading the official title of one of its analysts. The newly minted senior analyst is Barbara Dzidzornu Adagblenya who in her eagerness to impress prospective employers has created the longest work experience history over the shortest number of years in which she also earned three master degrees in more or less the same field. None of the degrees involved number crunching. Nor were any of them in business administration, quantitative analyses, or economics. And yet here is the Maltese government seeking Nordicity’s complicity in writing reports which justify tax rebates to foreign film companies. So embarrassing and shoddy has been Nordicity’s supporting research up to now, that Clayton Bartolo, the Minister of Tourism, can’t and won’t officially release the research under his watch.
Nordicity tells us that Barbara Adagblenya graduated with three M.A. degrees, from Canada, Switzerland, and South Korea. One degree was in development policy, the other in international affairs, and the third one in political sciences. All graduations happened within five short years, up to 2022. We searched for evidence of quantitative analysis skills by Barbara Adagblenyabut failed to find any.
The closest we came to quantitative material was her dissertation in Korea, a skimpy 40-page essay (double-line spacing). In the appendix she published the survey which started with demographic questions. Any researcher worth her salt would leave the demographic questions till the end of the survey since any researcher who starts by asking you your age, income and education invites a high rate of non-response. It is no wonder that, in her own words, “only thirty respondents answered the survey questions.” As a result, she had some cross-tabulations but no statistical analysis of the results. No T-Tests, no correlation analysis, and no Bayesian analysis (which are particularly useful when dealing with small sample sizes).
In listing her skills on RocketReach, she included “Qualitative Research,” but not “Quantitative Research.” Rightly so. However, Nordicity tweaked this on its own website and said that Barbara engages in “qualitative and quantitative data analysis.” Words are cheap. Her boss, the earring-enhanced Kristian Roberts, calls such manipulations the “Art of the Possible.” This is why the Maltese government engages Nordicity. The philosophy of manipulation commands a premium among corrupt governments.
Nordicity further informs us that she “worked in… South Korea, Switzerland, and Canada.” Instead, our investigation shows she never worked in South Korea. Saying that she did is one of many baseless claims. According to information volunteered by herself, she held nine jobs at international companies, in Switzerland, Canada, and the United States in the last five years alone.
In the last five years, she says she worked at (1) International Telecommunication Union, (2) CUTS International, (3)UNCTAD, (4) CARE Emergency Group, (5) the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), (6) Simon Fraser University, (7) Kesecurix, (8) Creative Industries Associates, and (9) since July 2021, Nordicity. Many of these jobs were supposedly held concurrently.
In 2014-5, she worked in two jobs. In 2017, she switched to two other jobs. In 2018, she worked four jobs. In 2019, she worked in three jobs. This year, she has held three jobs already. We have summarized it all in the illustration below. At Nordicity, her performance has been so stellar that, she tells us, she was promoted three times in two years.
The big problem is that when we started digging, we found jobs that were fictitious. She may have volunteered a few hours for an organization but that’s not a job. Or she may have written about the companies during her projects as part of her university studies. But this didn’t make her an employee. Imagine us listing the Malta Film Commission and the Ministry of Tourism as part of our employment history, simply because we are writing a series of articles about Malta’s second largest scam, after Stewart’s.
We also found evidence that one particular organization – not just the job – was created out of thin air to impress imbeciles at large. She lives in a fantasist world where CVs blabber and contradict each other. For example, in her LinkedIn, she says that in 2018 she worked for the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva. Whereas in her more comprehensive list at Datanyze, she leaves it out. Then, in Datanyze, she claims to have had a short stint at another company, Creative Industries Associates, earlier this year. In LinkedIn, she leaves it out.
During her studies in Switzerland, a group of fellow students in her class were assigned a project about UNCTAD in Geneva. She was a member of the group. She now lists UNCTAD in her “Previous Work Experience” even though the whole thing was a mere student project.
The UNCTAD experience repeated itself at CUTS International, headquartered in India. CUTS says in its website that it “accepts employment applications… for offices located at India, Zambia, Kenya, United Kingdom and Vietnam.” She worked in none of these countries during 2018 despite her listing CUTS as one of her employers for 2018. But she had two academic articles published by CUTS around the time. She had submitted them for publication during her graduate studies in Switzerland.CUTS appears in her “Previous Work Experience” when there was no work experience at CUTS. Such is her modus operandi.
The best fantasist example is how she is also currently working at Kesecurix, in parallel with her job at Nordicity. Yet, the firm’s alleged CEO, Steven Mueller, now denies the company’sexistence or his role in it. We will tell you more about this birthed-by-Adagblenya company in our next article, in a few more days.