Even a shower! What kind of guests does Battistelli bring over?
THE EPO moves from bad to worse. 0% of stakeholders support Battistelli (the same goes for staff), so it can't get any worse than this, but what happens to the reputation of the Office as a whole?
"What's worth noting or showing here is not the photos in their own right but the clandestine nature of the Office, even in this case."Watch the photos above; this is where the money goes while Battistelli and his cronies continue to pocket more of the EPO's budget and there are rumours that Battistelli wanted his own limousine too (even his own private elevator, but we were unable to verify this). He already spends millions on bodyguards which are neither needed nor acceptable (until he tells some bicycle tale).
One one comment said: "He's doing a great job of pushing the boundaries and proving where the flaws in the system are by exploiting them for his own profit" (posted on this new article from Kieren McCarthy).
What's worth noting or showing here is not the photos in their own right but the clandestine nature of the Office, even in this case. Well, the photos say it all really (there seem to be a lot more based on their numbers), as well as the attempts by the Office to take down these photos (which is why we reproduce them here, a sort of Streisand Effect). Here is how McCarthy put it:
Very few people have seen the 10th floor of the European Patent Office's ISAR building in Munich since it's been renovated – and for good reason.
Although hundreds of staff once worked on that floor, EPO president Benoit Battistelli decided that – at the same time the patent office budgeted €205m to construct an entirely new building in the Hague – he would turn the top floor of the ISAR building into his own private office.
The cost of that renovation is impossible to ascertain due to it being lumped in with the massive construction costs of the new building. But thanks to new pictures of the penthouse on the architect's website, recently noticed by eagle-eyed EPO staff, it is likely to have stretched into millions of euros.
"A grand palace for King Battistelli," one staffer remarked on the pictures, using a common nickname for the man whose behavior is increasingly more like a 17th-century monarch than the administrator of an international organization.