{"id":335,"date":"2015-12-08T05:16:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T05:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peteragallo.com\/?page_id=335"},"modified":"2016-11-24T02:47:47","modified_gmt":"2016-11-24T02:47:47","slug":"ethics-office","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/peteragallo.com\/?page_id=335","title":{"rendered":"Ethics Office"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UN Ethics Office<\/a> is probably the only office in the UN to have less credibility than OIOS\/ID, and has the rare distinction of being judicially recognised as being of no practical value in providing any sort of \u201cprotection\u201d against retaliation.\u00a0 By a majority decision of the UN Appeals Tribunal<\/a>, such protection in the UN has been deemed to be a privilege, not a right.<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, my first experience of the Ethics Office related to my Annual Appraisal in 2013, where they proved to be about as much use as a chocolate fireplace.<\/p>\n

Before getting into that however, we need a very quick lesson in the concept of \u201cretaliation\u201d as it applies in the UN.<\/p>\n

\n

The subject is governed by ST\/SGB\/2005\/21<\/a> where it states at para 2.1 that any staff member who either (a) reports misconduct, or (b) co-operates in good faith with a duly authorized investigation or audit, that is called a “protected act” and if they then experience retaliation for that “protected act” – they are entitled to protection against retaliation. Hooray \u2013 that sounds good. What\u2019s not<\/i> to like?<\/p>\n

The Ethics Office deals with these applications for protection against retaliation. Their mandate is laid out in ST\/SGB\/2005\/21<\/a> para 5.2 which states (in fairly clear language) that the Ethics Office shall:<\/p>\n

(a) receive complaints of retaliation or threats of retaliation;<\/p>\n

(b) keep a confidential record of all those complaints, and;<\/p>\n

(c) conduct a \u201cpreliminary review\u201d of the complaint to determine if:<\/p>\n

(i) the complainant did actually either report misconduct or co-operate with an investigation or audit; and<\/p>\n

(ii) there is a prima facie case that that activity was a contributing factor in the retaliation (or threat of retaliation) that they then suffered.<\/p>\n

So, when a staff member suffers retaliated after reporting misconduct, they have to contact the Ethics Office about it and all the Ethics Office has to do is basically see if it passes (or more accurately, if it fails<\/i>) the \u201csniff test\u201d…<\/p>\n

The Ethics Office do not need to launch a formal investigation. They need only do a ‘preliminary review’ to determine whether the misconduct report was a contributing factor <\/b>in the retaliation. If so, the case should then be passed to OIOS to investigate the retaliation, but leave that aside for the time being<\/p>\n

It shouldn’t be rocket science. (1) The staff member reports misconduct, (that is the “protected act”.)\u00a0 (2) The Staff Member suffers\u00a0 retaliation. (3) The Ethics Office take a quick look at it to determine whether the “protected act” was at least a contributing factor in that retaliation. Then, if the Ethics Office thinks it does<\/em> look like retaliation, the Ethics Office sends it to OIOS for formal investigation.<\/p>\n

OK, fine. Even the most intellectually disadvantaged single-celled organism should be able to understand that.\u00a0\u00a0 So what\u2019s the problem?<\/p>\n

Al well….. you see…. the trouble is that the if this was actually implemented, senior managers of the UN would not actually be able to retaliate against those seditious little b****rds who reported them for breaching the rules.\u00a0 Senior managers of the UN don’t like to have to follow rules. They think they are gods, and have no interest in actually being reined in by that terrible and unpalatable thing called accountability<\/b> \u2013 which is a concept the UN considers about as welcome as a cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n

It would be wrong to suggest the UN does not have a concept of accountability. They do, no paper. In practice however, you will find it is in the same category of such concepts as nuclear fusion, extra-terrestrial intelligence and apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in New Jersey. All are technically possible but not so that anyone really has to worry about it…..<\/p>\n

So here is a Case Study on how the Ethics Office really<\/i> behaves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Round One<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I had been presented with this ridiculous PIP<\/a> that portrayed me as totally incompetent.<\/p>\n

Nobody would tell me what exactly I had done wrong that would justify the PIP<\/a>, but they insisted I sign the damn thing, so I complained that it was harassment and an abuse of authority, i.e. I reported misconduct.<\/i><\/a>\u00a0 (Really sharp readers will be saying “protected act” at this stage already.)<\/p>\n

Then, in addition to being ostracised and everything else, I got an Annual Appraisal that didn\u2019t even pretend to be even-handed. In their desperation to portray absolutely everything I had done as inept, that Annual Appraisal directly contradicted the comments made at the half-year mark. It contradicted the e-mails sent to me when I first queried the PIP, and went to great length to criticise me for having the temerity to ask what I had done to merit it. As I had predicted, the Appraisal was nothing but a retrospective attempt to distract attention from the fact that Dzuro \u2013 who was supposed to be my First Reporting Officer \u2013 simply could not answer the questions put to him about the PIP<\/a>….<\/p>\n

That was even before<\/em> I went through it line by line and rebutted everything it contained. Long on content, the Appraisal was remarkably deficient in actual substance. It was unashamed character assassination that would have made Lavrenti Beria blush, and could be cited as a Case Study at a Psychology Conference on psycopathy in the workplace.\u00a0\u00a0 My cat<\/em> would have no intellectual explaining this was R-E-T-A-L-I-A-T-I-O-N.<\/p>\n

So, we appear to have a misconduct complaint, and a direct causal connection to an Annual Appraisal that was excessive<\/i> to say the least.<\/p>\n

The question for the Ethics Office was only whether the misconduct complaint was a contributing factor <\/b>in the Annual Appraisal, and you would have to be deaf, dumb, blind AND stupid not to connect the complaint and the retaliation.<\/p>\n

So, after I had finished the rebuttal<\/a>, which showed the Annual Appraisal to have even less justification that the PIP; I applied to the Ethics Office for Protection against Retaliation under ST\/SGB\/2005\/21.<\/a><\/p>\n

So far so good?<\/p>\n

So what did the Ethics Office do?<\/p>\n

Anyone who thinks the answer involves recognising that this was retaliation; go to the bottom of the class….<\/p>\n

My application was reviewed by an Ethics Officer by the name of Kevin Waite, who is clearly a linguistic conjurer of some renown.\u00a0 By selective misrepresenting the regulations, Mr. Waite managed to create a loophole that did not actually exist, and then rely on it to dismiss the application.<\/p>\n

Brilliant!<\/p>\n

Remember, the UN Ethics Office is an office that manages to dismiss over 97% of all applications for whistleblower protection;<\/a> so one has to admire their diligence, if not their morality – or their ethics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

According to the Ethics Office<\/a>, I was not entitled to protection against retaliation because my misconduct complaint was NOT a valid complaint for the purposes of whistleblower protection because it did not contain \u201cevidence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Really? For a start, they were quoting ST\/SGB\/2005\/21<\/a> para 2.1(a) which states:<\/p>\n

The individual must make the report in good faith and must submit information or evidence to support a reasonable belief that misconduct has occurred.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I do sympathise if Mr. Waite suffers from a medical condition that causes sporadic blind spots in his vision, but he either failed to see, or simply ignored the words \u201cinformation <\/i>or<\/b><\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is an interesting insight into the culture of Ethics Office.\u00a0 Forget what the General Assembly actually mandated them to do, the Ethics Office bends over backwards to ignore<\/i> the retaliation which, thanks to their wilful blindness, is endemic in the UN. They are no\u00a0 more “independent” than OIOS or my left kidney; they are an executive arm of the Secretary-General, and play an important role in discouraging staff members from reporting misconduct.<\/p>\n

I had submitted a complaint<\/a> that was almost 2,000 words in length. The text was neither a recitation of all 64 verses of \u201cThe Ballad of Eskimo Nell<\/i>\u201d nor the lyrics of the Rolling Stones \u201cCan\u2019t get no Satisfaction<\/i>\u201d but instead narrated the grounds of my complaint; so one would be forgiven for thinking that those 2,000 words might have constituted \u201cinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, Ethics Officer Waite dismissed it saying there was no evidence<\/a>.\"really\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Oddly enough, in those 2,000 words<\/a> of information, I had referred to an e-mail, sent by a specific person at a specific time on a specific day. One might be forgiven for assuming that that would indicate there was information or evidence to support a reasonable belief that misconduct has occurred.<\/i><\/p>\n

Moreover, the <\/i>whole the basis of my complaint was that I was being coerced to agree to the PIP that my First Reporting Officer could not justify. He would not answer the questions that I had asked. He would not tell me what I was supposed to have done that constituted a \u201cperformance shortcoming<\/i>\u201d and because he would not answer my questions, I had no answers.<\/p>\n

The Ethics Office were not concerned with my not having answers to my questions. Neither were they concerned with the fairly fundamental difference between, on the one hand, telling someone that they have to improve (even if that were true) in the future<\/i>, and on the other hand, not being able to show that they are alleged to have done wrong in the past<\/i>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Ethics Office found that the reason for the unfavourable Annual Appraisal<\/a> was \u201cprior documented performance shortcomings<\/i>\u201d – the very absence<\/u><\/strong><\/em> of which had been the basis of the misconduct complaint<\/a> in the first place.<\/p>\n

So, just in case anyone blinked and missed the neat wriggling manoevre here; the Ethics Office stated that the reason I was not<\/u> entitled to whistleblower protection was because there was \u201cno evidence\u201d of any misconduct on the part of Dzuro and Baldini who could not<\/i> answer the questions that I asked, but the answers they could not provide were actually the reason for the bad Annual Appraisal, so it could not be \u201cretaliation\u201d anyway.<\/a><\/p>\n

OK?<\/p>\n

Somewhere, through the Looking Glass, a Mad Hatter and a White Rabbit explained all of this to Alice while they finished off their second bottle of vodka and passed around a fatty of Afghani Black, and it all made perfect sense.\u00a0 I, sadly, must lack their great comprehension skills.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The only thing that I have to say to the credit of the Ethics Office is that they can move with the speed of a thousand gazelles when it suits them. I submitted the application on Thursday 18 July 2013, and nobody works on the weekend in the UN. Without even bothering to talk to anyone, the Ethics Office replied on Tuesday 23rd<\/sup>. (That promptness is interesting when compared to their lethargy the next time around…..)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Round Two<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Roll on six months.<\/p>\n

Christmas 2013 brings the judgement in Nguyen-Kropp & Postica (UNDT\/2013\/176)<\/a> and although the question at issue in that case was not primarily one of retaliation, Meeran J. did address the concept of retaliation at some length. It was clearly necessary after all; the UN seemed to have inordinate difficulty understanding what it was….<\/p>\n

Now this is interesting because several things have happened since July; I had been the subject of a number of petty complaints \u2013 all of them made by Dzuro<\/a>, Baldini and Dudley<\/a>, all of whom had been the subjects of the misconduct complaint I had made following the attempt to stuff me with the PIP<\/a> back in March – and Lapointe was doing absolutely nothing to discourage them.\u00a0 (This was BEFORE the great “possible assault<\/a>” complaint.)<\/p>\n