Congress to quiz WIPO whistle-blowers
A joint subcommittee at the US Congress will hold a hearing this week on whistle-blowers and accountability at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
The hearing, scheduled for tomorrow, February 24, is expected to reference the results of a pending UN investigation into WIPO and hear from ex-employees at the organisation.
James Pooley, a former WIPO deputy director, Moncef Kateb, ex-president of the staff association, and Miranda Brown, a former adviser to WIPO’s director general Francis Gurry, will be witnesses.
Pooley, in a report of misconduct filed in April 2014, claimed Gurry had ordered a series of burglaries of workers’ offices in order to obtain samples of their DNA.
Gurry, according to Pooley’s allegations, suspected that some of the workers may have been behind anonymous letters that alleged financial impropriety.
In October of that year, WIPR reported that WIPO was being investigated externally over the allegations.
That investigation, carried out by Netherlands-based Labyrinth Risk Consulting and professional services firm KPMG, concluded that a more detailed investigation was required.
It was not until April last year that the UN’s internal oversight body, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, announced it would be investigating the claims.
However, the results of the investigation, which the Intellectual Property Watch blog has claimed has been completed, have yet to come to light.
The lack of information on the investigation will also form part of tomorrow’s hearing.
In response to the delay in information, the US Department of State reportedly withheld $370,000, understood to be 15% of the annual amount it provides to WIPO.
Kateb was dismissed in 2014 after being accused of improperly using confidential information related to two colleagues’ disciplinary cases.
He was accused of breaching confidentiality rules and conflict of interest, and was suspended without pay in early September 2014 before later losing his job.
But in a letter sent by two rapporteurs connected to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, it is claimed that Kateb was wrongly suspended.
Kateb was thought to be the first to blow the whistle on Gurry’s alleged sending of computer equipment to North Korea and Iran, in what critics said was a breach of UN Security Council sanctions.
However, the UN denied there was any breach.
The third ex-employee who Congress will hear from is Brown, who worked as a high-level adviser to Gurry before leaving the organisation.
The hearing, called “Joint Subcommittee Hearing: Establishing Accountability at the World Intellectual Property Organization: Illicit Technology Transfers, Whistleblowing, and Reform”, is expected to be broadcast online.
WIPO declined to comment on the hearing.
