This article is the subject of a legal complaint made on behalf of Bernardino Leon.

The United Nations special representative in Libya spent the summer negotiating a £35,000-a-month job with a Gulf state that supports one side in the civil war he was trying to end, the Guardian can reveal.

Bernardino León, the UN peace mediator and a former Spanish foreign minister, was offered a job in June by the United Arab Emirates, the federation of seven absolute monarchies dominated by oil-rich Abu Dhabi, as director general of its “diplomatic academy”.



On Wednesday the UAE announced that León would take over as head of the academy, a state-backed thinktank founded last year to promote the UAE’s foreign policy and strategic relations and train its diplomats. A German diplomat, Martin Kobler, has been appointed his successor at the UN.

León is due to end his previous role on Friday, leaving Libya’s rival factions deadlocked over his plans for a national unity government.

He denies any conflict of interest, saying he had made it clear he wanted to leave his UN role by 1 September. “The only defence I have against these attacks is my work,” he wrote in an email to the Guardian. “As I said before, read my proposals, the agreement and the government proposal. It has been considered by the Libyans from both camps as a fair proposal.”



Emails seen by the Guardian show León was offered the role of director general in June, a move followed up by talks about increasing his housing allowance a month later. In August he said he would be travelling with his family to settle down in Abu Dhabi.

Analysts say Libya’s civil war has been stoked by outsiders. They say Egypt and the UAE are using the country as a battleground for a proxy war against Islamists allegedly backed by Turkey and Qatar.



The rivalry between Qatar and the UAE, which is renowned for its fierce opposition to Islamists at home and abroad, means both regularly seek to undermine and embarrass each other.

Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, called on the British prime minister, David Cameron, on Tuesday to complete the mission he started in Libya with the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and prevent the country succumbing to a fate similar to Syria’s.



León’s new job in the UAE calls into question his impartiality as the UN’s chief peacemaker.

Just five months after he was appointed as its mediator in Libya, he sent an email dated 31 December 2014 to the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, from his personal account.

In it he tells the UAE that, because of the slow progress of peace talks, Europe and the US were asking for a “plan B … a classical peace conference ... This is, in my opinion, a worse option than a political dialogue … because it will treat both sides as equal actors”.

The Libyan state has slid into chaos in the last few years, with an estimated 1,600 armed militias operating in a country of 6 million people. Most, however, back one of two main political groupings – either the Islamist-backed national assembly, known as the General National Congress (GNC), or the elected parliament, called the House of Representatives (HOR).



León goes on to say that his plan is to “break a very dangerous alliance” between the wealthy merchants of Misrata and the Islamists that keeps the GNC afloat. He says he wants to reinforce the HOR, the body backed by the UAE and Egypt.



He states bluntly that he is “not working on a political plan that will include everybody” and talks of having a strategy to “completely delegitimise” the GNC. He admits “all my movements and proposals have been consulted with [and in many cases designed by] the HOR and [Libya’s ambassador to the UAE] Aref Nayed and [the UAE-based former Libyan prime minister] Mahmud Jibril”.

In signing off, León tells the UAE’s foreign minister: “I can help and control the process while I am there. However, as you know I am not planning to stay for a long time … I am seen as biased in favour of HOR. I advised the US, UK and EU to work with you.”



León denies he has favoured any side in the conflict and says that he produced a “fair proposal” to end the war. He emailed the Guardian to say that he had had “many similar communications with other countries supporting the other Libyan camp, in a similar spirit. I’m sure in different occasions I also told them that they can ‘count on me’. My job is to build trust with all of them, inside and outside Libya”.

In an email sent by a UAE minister, Sultan Al Jaber, to the country’s foreign minister, León is said to be unable to find anywhere suitable to live in Abu Dhabi with his 360,000 dirham (£63,600) a year housing allowance.

It is claimed he would like almost twice the sum for a family home on an upmarket island resort off the coast of Abu Dhabi called Saadiyat, a new cultural hub that houses outposts of the Louvre and the Guggenheim Museum.



The minister writes that León “claims he could not find a suitable property – on par with his own in Madrid – within the allowance. The Saadiyat properties he’s interested in rent between AED 500,000 and 600k per annum.”

Despite the delays in reaching a peace agreement in Libya, analysts say León’s role is regarded as a minor success, particularly considering the chaos in Syria.

He emailed the UAE foreign ministry in August to say he was in line for a prestigious UN position, to be “a kind of high advisor for all UN mediations” and that it would help “future UAE diplomats interact with some of the most relevant world mediators”.



He adds: “Of course, if you prefer I focus exclusively on [the diplomatic academy], there’s no problem and I won’t accept the proposal.”



The UN guidance on effective mediation says mediators should “not accept conditions for support from external actors that would affect the impartiality of the process” and that they should “hand over to another mediator, or mediating entity, if they feel unable to maintain a balanced and impartial approach”.



The Guardian contacted León on Monday, when he denied that he had taken up the job. He sent an email on Wednesday morning claiming he had not “signed a contract yet. Just talks”. He asked the Guardian to hold off publishing the story, and offered an interview to explain the situation. Before he could do so, his new job was announced.

León insists that the emails have been manipulated, and that they represented a selective view of his role. He adds that he had considered resigning from his post in Libya in early January and taking up an “academic post in America”. “Only many months later, when my UN contract was about about to expire, I started again discussions on my future work,” he said.