AS EXPECED, THE EPO does not want its staff to be informed. It's not helpful (to oneself) when people receive information about one's crimes. This is a lot bigger (in terms of financial scale) than FIFA/UEFA scandals. Techrights will be publishing censored EPO publications this week; we have some securities in place, e.g. in case of censorship attempts. We accomplish this by decentralisation, notably mass dissemination to and from many nodes that can serve the suppressed pages.
Today we start by publishing a document about buildings the EPO planned to build at a massive cost (prior to the pandemic). António Campinos likes to pretend that the Office has a financial crisis while Benoît Battistelli loses hundreds of millions of euros of EPO money by gambling that money away. Why was a criminal put in charge of a law school? You know a "scheme" when you see one and it's not hard to see who will benefit from it...
"You know a "scheme" when you see one and it's not hard to see who will benefit from it...""Burning money to create a burning deck," the Committee of EPO staff (CSC) called the building projects. "Management is currently censoring a CSC paper about Mr Campinos' building investment program," it noted. We've already given examples of Campinos and his colleagues censoring the CSC as early as 2018. "We ask ourselves whether the Building Investment Program (CA/43/19) is in line with sound housekeeping," the CSC said. "Moreover, the focus should be on staff needs for accommodation. We request the Administrative Council to consider putting a caveat on the programme in its present form: we need to first explore scenarios and work on the programme of requirements in a truly inclusive manner, involving the Staff Committees as user representatives. After adoption, the programme should be monitored by an independent body to limit the risks of mismanagement and fraud."
Well, those "risks of mismanagement and fraud" are more than just risks but a reality; mismanagement and fraud had gone on for years prior to this project. Here's the summary of the full publication:
Summary: Burning money to create a burning deck
The Central Staff Committee appreciates the commitment to preserving the EPO’s patrimony in a state that it provides a healthy and motivating working environment and aims at improving sustainability. The proposed programme requires unprecedented expenditure. We ask ourselves whether this is in line with sound housekeeping. The planned investment over more than EUR 1 billion also appears to have future sales of property in mind. It presupposes that future owners would find the EPO’s definition of modern and state-of-the-art attractive and suitable for their respective needs. It may also be the case that inflated, unachievable, values of buildings will be used for future planning decisions. With planning concepts for workspaces changing over time it is impossible to predict what a future owner might require at an undetermined point of sale. We feel that this perspective should not feature at all in any building or refurbishment plans of the EPO. The focus should be on staff needs for accommodation. A possible sale of PschorrHöfe 7 without considering abandoning the lease of Haar does not appear to be thought through.
Initiatives to preserve the value of our patrimony enjoy the support of staff, whilst increasing its value for increasing’s sake does not, and especially not at a time where a flawed financial study paves the way to heavy cuts in salaries, allowances and pensions. The building of an “engaged, knowledgeable and collaborative organisation” does not require many of the initiatives at the base of the current program. The Building Investment Program is burning money to help create the burning deck painted in the Financial Study for preparing for instance an affordability-issue for tax-compensation on pensions. Faced with such prospects it is no wonder that staff are very suspicious of building projects that are not only excessive but also detrimentally affect the day-to-day work and, ultimately, staff health. It is undisputed that some renovation of old buildings and maintenance is necessary. But investments here should be driven by needs, not by aspirations not serving the staff’s – and therefore the Office’s – interests.
We request the Administrative Council to consider putting a caveat on the presented Building Investment Program and to instead encourage the President to first explore scenarios and work on the programme of requirements in a truly inclusive manner, involving the Staff Committees as user representatives. A revised Building Investment Program should then be presented to the AC.
Cost transparency, cost control, the lack of adequate planning, the Office’s capacity and even its ability to manage such projects were an issue for New Main as well as for the Isar-refurbishment (see CA/7/12, C. Report on the project costs). A program-value of in excess of EUR 1bn combined with the intended types of contract entails a very high risk of mismanagement and fraud occurring in the various phases of the program. The Administrative Council should not be put in a position again where it grudgingly has to approve further expenditure. The program should be monitored by an independent body over the whole life-cycle of the program, with uninhibited access to all information sources and reporting directly to the Administrative Council. An Audit Committee analogous to the one defined in CA/D 9/09 comes to mind.