Secretary-General Appoints Juraj Strasser of Slovakia Director, Ethics Office

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced today the appointment of Juraj Strasser of Slovakia, as Director of the UN Ethics Office.  He will succeed Elia Armstrong of Canada, to whom the Secretary-General is grateful for her dedicated service to the Organization.

The Secretary-General also wishes to extend his appreciation to the Senior Ethics Officer and Head of the Advisory Services and Financial Disclosure Unit, UN Ethics Office, Thi Kim Xuan Nguyen, who will continue to serve as Acting Director of the UN Ethics Office until Mr. Strasser assumes this position.

Mr. Strasser brings to the position more than 30 years of extensive experience in the field of organizational ethics, governance and law, having served in different capacities at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as well as in the private sector.

He has been serving as Head of Ethics at OECD since 2022. Mr. Strasser also served in various leadership roles at EBRD, between 1993 and 2010, and 2013 and 2022, including as Director of Policy and Ethics and Deputy Chief Compliance Officer, as well as Acting Chief Compliance Officer.  He also worked as General Counsel in a major private sector infrastructure company.

Mr. Strasser holds a master’s degree in law from Duke University in the United States, and a post-graduate degree and bachelor’s degree in law from the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia.  He is a member of the New York Bar and the Chamber of Advocates of the Czech Republic.  Mr. Strasser is fluent in English and Russian, in addition to Slovak, his mother tongue, and in Czech.