08.08.16
Rumours About Secret EPO Salary of Benoît Battistelli
No transparency, no accountability (more greed and lawlessness)
Summary: Rumours about the amount of money Benoît Battistelli gets paid to ruin the European Patent Office (EPO), which has become more secretive and accordingly reckless
FOR a number of years now (not just months) people have wondered how much money Battistelli gets paid (money extracted from EPO budget without any proper oversight). Staff of the EPO does not trust Battistelli at all. Asking for transparency/details of Presidential salary should not be out of the ordinary as previous Presidents, a la Alison Brimelow (Battistelli’s predecessor at the Office), openly stated their salary and there was no confrontation about it. Battistelli is different because some say that Bergot, his friend’s wife (Elodie Bergot), increased his salary and/or bonus. We want to catch him in a lie right now, not because we have something against him personally but because the secrecy he brought to the EPO (definitely worse than in Brimelow’s days) hurts the credibility of the Office and damages — by extension — Europe’s reputation for accountability and relatively low corruption rates.
“Someone anonymous got told (a while back) that the salary was actually €42,000 a month (i.e. just over half a million Euros, a lot more than even national Presidents and EU heads receive), but that came through a friend via another friend, thus lacking any documentary evidence for it.”It is worth noting that Mr. Kongstad, Battistelli’s successor in the Council, knows Battistelli’s salary but cooperates in keeping the salary secret (as well as the contract which may include other forms of benefit/compensation). We are not going to go after Kongstad, however, because his role in this secrecy is at best intended to appease Battistelli’s will. Earlier this year we heard that Elodie Bergot gave Battistelli a raise (not years but months ago), so we assume her department too knows the salary but keeps quiet about it. Quite a few people out there know how much Battistelli gets paid, so why does he keep so quiet about it? Maybe because it contradicts what he said to the Dutch press?
Rumours about Battistelli’s salary/ies (contracts change over time) are out there in the wild. EPO workers speak about it, but few have actually seen a document confirming the hard facts. Someone anonymous got told (a while back) that the salary was actually €42,000 a month (i.e. just over half a million Euros, a lot more than even national Presidents and EU heads receive), but that came though a friend via another friend, thus lacking any documentary evidence for it. “The problem I have found,” told us this anonymous source, “is that almost everything I find out that I don’t actually see in a document has the risk of being false. That is what happens, I guess, when there is no transparency and people have to rely of rumors (very USSR). The most reliable rumors come from getting the IT people drunk in the EPO bar. They have access to everything.”
Half a million Euros annually (gross) contradicts other rumours we have come across, including some which say €1,000,000, €1.2m, or close to €1.5m.
What is the real salary? We may never know unless or until the contracts get leaked or Battistelli comes clean like his predecessor, Alison Brimelow. █
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