Bonum Certa Men Certa

Extremely Dodgy Dealings at the European Patent Office

WELLKOM LIMITED DEBT



Summary: Yet another dodgy contract between Battistelli's EPO and private contractors overseas, this time in an effort to whitewash or cleanse the image of the EPO's current regime

"The dude behind the OHSRA [Occupational Health Survey]," explains to us a reader, is someone that's now the subject of gossip and rumours.



"Although the EPO systematically brushed aside all risks' warnings issued by SUEPO/staff reps for the past years," this reader continues, "5 suicides later something had to be done ASAP: the EPO is currently organising a white-washing exercise to story-tell the public that it cares for its staff whereas the production pressure has never ever been so high and the level of psychological stress explodes, according to some insider information.

"Whilst on the one hand the EPO shoots big time at messengers (e.g. SUEPO officials alerting staff and reporting that the HR policies implemented by "Mrs-spouse-from-Battistelli's-right-arm" are known to be dangerous) on the other hand the EPO hired a weird very structure (see below) to perform an Occupational Health Survey office-wide (as you may expect with no genuine involvement of staff representation and after a non-public selection procedure whilst pretending otherwise.

"Here the information about this "serious provider".

First company: WELLKOM LIMITED Check filing history and the first PDFs. The company is registered in a private house, has two owners (Mr Phillips and his presumed wife, 2nd PDF), had massive assets: GBP 2 (just over 2 euros). It looks like an empty shell.

Second company: WELLKOM CORPORATE SERVICES LIMITED Check the first PDF: Same postal address as above. In 2014, went from GBP 87,000 assets... to GBP 190,000 debts.

“...the EPO is currently organising a white-washing exercise to story-tell the public that it cares for its staff whereas the production pressure has never ever been so high and the level of psychological stress explodes, according to some insider information.”
      --Anonymous
"But no worries," our reader said, "now the EPO is here to help." This isn't the only such ongoing 'study' or 'survey' whose so-called 'findings', based on information we have received, were more or less decided in advance. We gave examples of these before. If there's no open tender or procurement process, then there's lots of room for folly, e.g. staff getting an old friend (or worse -- family) a fat contract. Recall the story about Questel's deal with the EPO and its relation to Jacques Michel, who now receives sensitive data from the EPO, under the umbrella of Europatis [1, 2, 3, 4]. As people here in Britain say, "it's as dodgy as f%$#."

As we pointed out several weeks ago, Battistelli made such private contracts virtually invisible to anyone (so much for "transparency"!), unless they get leaked.

We now know that the EPO (not a private entity) is paying a fortune for six bodyguards to march around Battistelli, paying a fortune (almost a million dollars) to a PR company based in the US, and paying for military-connected Control Risks (we don't know the amount paid, as no leaks relating to this ever reached us). The EPO is so rotten in fact that even the police is now disregarded and the premises are policed by a Croatian thug who faces many criminal charges in his home country. To quote a comment from yesterday:

If there ever was any foul play (something which I mightily doubt) then the President ought to call in the police to conduct a proper investigation at the EPO, and not take matters in his own hands, or trust one of his creatures to spin some conspiracy theory.

IIRC, there are precedents where the national police was allowed to enter the EPO offices for cases of petty theft. But on the other hand, from my own experience, it is nearly impossible to get a German policeman to lift his derrière from his chair for a case of theft or vandalism involving a mere bicycle.

What does the President have to fear, if his allegations are true? He could hardly invoke his personal impunity, sorry, the EPOrg's immunity, to justify his barricading.

A version of this sordid affair could become in a few years the canvas for an episode of the dreadful "Tatort" series...


How many dodgy dealings does the EPO need to be involved in (never mind many suicides and human rights abuses) before the German authorities send independent investigators on-site? It cannot go on like this. As a reminder, tomorrow in the afternoon this subject will be discussed in the Bavarian Parliament (covering Munich), and not for the first time either. Based on a recent program from Bavarian television, at least some of the suicides at the EPO were the fault of the management (we had to remove copies of this program). Wellkom's job is apparently to lie about it or make up a false narrative with which Team Battistelli can lobby or alter the record.

As a side note, over the past 2 years we have received alarming messages about panicky doctors who are extremely concerned about suicidal tendencies among EPO staff, caused directly because of the workplace (expectations, intimidation, workload and so on). We were kindly asked not to quote these directly (as these messages can reveal identities), but such relatively old messages sure help substantiate what was said above. To pretend otherwise is to mislead, or to produce propaganda for personal gain. Is Wellkom that desperate? Given its grim financial situation, it might be.

Recent Techrights' Posts

EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete