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By Matthew Russell Lee, Video, New Petition

UN GATE, Nov 23  – The UN World Intellectual Property Organization, whose work on North Korea's cyanide patents and retaliation Inner City Press has reported on, is still at it.

Inner City Press previously reported that "WIPO CIO and whistleblower Wei LEI has been summarily dismissed by WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. This has been years in the making, ever since Wei Lei testified against Gurry in an OIOS investigation." Wei Lei and allies have tirelessly raised the issue to member states (the same states which have yet to prevail on Guterres to relent on his retaliatory ban on the critical Press in New York); and now this, on November 23:

"From: Wei Lei <mrweilei@protonmail.com> Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2019 4:42 PM To: ethicsoffice <ethicsoffice@wipo.int> Cc: WIPO Review <reviewwipo@unops.org>; UNOPS Ethics Officer <ethicsofficer@unops.org>; ethicsoffice <ethicsoffice@un.org>; ethicsoffice@unrwa.org; ethics.office@unfpa.org; ethics@unicef.org; ethicsoffice@undp.org; hqethics@unhcr.org; 'Ms. Maria Vicien Milburn' <maria.vicien.milburn@gmail.com>; egbert.kaltenbach@gmail.com; maroc@mission-maroc.ch; missionfrance@bluewin.ch; FICSA General Secretary <ficsagensec@un.org>; wfp.ethics@wfp.org; missionofiran@gmail.com; wei lei <mrweilei@hotmail.com>; chitra.radhakishun@wipo.int; jessamyn.honculada@wipo.int Subject: RE: [CONFIDENTIAL] Communication from the Ethics Office     Dear Ms. Radhakishun,  I take note of your decision to designate an alternative in your stead without my acceptance. As you are well aware that this designation needs to meet my acceptance, as you quoted below of the paragraph 30 of the WIPO Office Instruction 33/2017 (Policy for Whistleblower Protection, or PWP in short), I would consider that you have again deliberately violated PWP.  To remind, your conflict of interest and the subsequent recusal stem from my report of misconduct and the resulting official investigation against you after IOD’s preliminary evaluation of my complaint. The complaint alleged that you deliberately misled me and refused my rights for seeking external review of your determination as provisioned under the paragraph 32 of PWP.  To further remind, the investigation report that you have designated an alternative to review is the result of my complaint against the Director General, Mr. Francis Gurry, the Assistant Director General, Mr. Ambi Sundaram, and the Director of HRMD, Ms. Cornelia Moussa for their retaliations against me as a key witness in an OIOS investigation, which concluded Mr. Gurry’s wrongdoing. My complaint was rejected by you. Despite the explicit provisions in PWP, you further concluded that your determination was not subject to UNOPS review. Upon my request for review nevertheless, UNOPS Ethics Office on 4 May 2018 overruled your determination and requested an independent investigation against the three subjects mentioned above.  It took WIPO 14 months to conclude the investigation without having me, the complainant, interviewed despite my requests. Then you repeatedly designated your alternatives to staff members whose performance, career and even employment in WIPO are directly under the purview of the subjects of my complaint.  On a separate note but still worth noting, a month after WIPO was requested to investigate its senior officials and to protect me as a whistleblower – WIPO had already advertised my post in March 2018 without the decency to even discuss with me in advance, I was put under the third investigation within 18 months and expeditiously dismissed with the allegation that I used a colleague’s bank card to withdraw chf 300 from the ATM in WIPO! I categorically denied the allegation and requested the Swiss authorities to investigate the instance. But Mr. Gurry refused to lift my immunities for more than four months, despite my repeated requests, until WIPO had concluded its own flawed investigation.  Ms. Radhakishun, in these last days of Mr. Gurry’s reign, I can only hope that you, the Chief Ethics Officer, can help colleagues at large reflect how to restore the moral compass that have been so badly corrupted over the past decade under this Administration and seek paths for reconciliation. I am hopeful that, under the new leadership, the era of pitting staff against each other to instill fear and control will be over soon. Do your job and be worthy of the word “Ethics” in your job title! Best regards, Wei." We'll have more on this.

     The allegation goes like this:  For weeks Lei kept the card that was sent to his office by mistake, running the risk of having the card been reported as missing and blocked; On the day he planned to commit the fraud, Lei intentionally notified the owner of the card that he received the card by mistake and that he had forward the card to the owner, running the risk that the owner might walk over to his office asking for the card; An hour later Lei made the withdrawal of 300 Swiss Francs with full knowledge of the presence of security cameras, although the card was reported to the bank as missing 3 days earlier and a replacement was already sent and his assistant denied receiving the PIN.    Not only did the WIPO administration believe such a story is credable, it also convinced itself that the crime was beyond a reasonable doubt although the bank had refused to provide the basic information such as where the card was sent and if the card was blocked.     Even Chitra Radhakishun, the WIPO Chief Ethics Officer, initially determined that the bank card investigation against Lei should be investigated as retaliation. But the WIPO administration immediately put Radhakishun under investigation. Sylvie Forbin, Deputy Director General of WIPO who received Radhakishun’s recommendation, also wrote to Radhakishun and asked her to reconsider. Three weeks after that, Radhakishun was sufficiently convinced that her position needed to change and, therefore, issued a new determination that reversed her earlier determination.     To make the whole story even more dramatic, the Ethics Office of UNOPS - on which Inner City Press has also been reporting - who was contracted by WIPO to review the WIPO Ethics Office’s determinations, ruled that WIPO Chief Ethics Officer’s initial determination was not a determination, although it was in the memorandum to Lei under the heading of “Determination”, and that Radhakishun’s second determination should be accepted, although WIPO policy does not allow its Ethics Office to conduct a review of its own determination and Radhakishun should have recused herself by then as she was under investigation with allegation of her misconduct against Lei.     Lei has now complained to OIOS and to Guterres -- good luck, a fish rots from the head -- and asked an investigation into the possible collusion between the Ethics Office of UNOPS and the WIPO Administration.  But could people other than retaliation master Guterres take action? Watch this site. That's WIPO -  the wider UN of Antonio Guterres has banned Inner City Press from entering its campus since 3 July 2018, claiming that its Lieutenant Ronald Dobbins targeted ouster of Inner City Press from a speech by Secretary General Antonio Guterres on June 22 then from a meeting about his budget on July 3 were "altercations." Next this ban was extended  beyond the UN campus to the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, for a July 10 press conference by the UN affiliated but ostensibly independent World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which as Inner City Press has previously reported helped North Korea with its cyanide patents and retaliated against it staff and media. Inner City Press was e-mailed an invitation on July 2 and replied with an RSVP to cover it. Marshall Hoffman of WIPO's public relations firm Hoffman PR wrote back, "Thanks. We will see at the press conference." After that, Guterres spokesman Farhan Haq was asked why Inner City Press is banned and said it is pending a review of two "altercations" - both of which were improper and unilateral ousters of Inner City Press by UN Security's Dobbins and officers, four of whom refused to give their names. Soon, there was this follow up e-mail from WIPO's flak Marshall Hoffman: "Dear Matthew, It has come to my attention that your accreditation to the UN has been suspended pending an investigation into an incident. Given the suspension, I regret you will not be able to attend the WIPO press conference."

Now the UN has gone so far as to put Inner City Press on a "banned from UN" list it does not make public; Guterres' security nearly got Park East Synagogue security to oust Inner City Press from Guterres' October 31 speech... on tolerance. This is today's UN: the ban must be reversed.

We'll have more on this - and on this: how untransparent and inaccessible is Antonio Guterres, as UN Secretary General? The day he canceled his first UN Headquarters press conference in six months, he was ironically the guest of honor of the United Nations Correspondents Association. He was scheduled to make remarks at 6 pm - but it was not in the UN Media Alert. Inner City Press, whose RSVP to UNCA was never responded to, streamed the event from the tourists' balcony, edited here. Then Guterres' UN Security guards physically ousted Inner City Press from covering the UN Fifth Committee's July 3 meeting on his proposal to fire UN staff and move the jobs- then on July 5 banned Inner City Press from entering the UN. Fox News story here, GAP blogs I and II.

While Guterres' UNCA fan club said nothing, others did. Guterres blathered on about how he supported the media in Portugal - dubious - and then cuts a cake for his UN Censorship Alliance. Earlier Inner City Press asked Guterres' lead spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who previously lent the UN Press Briefing Room to UNCA, if the event was open press but he refused to answer and ran off. Inner City Press asked the spokesman from the President of the General Assembly, who is listed as attended but will not speak, why it is not in the UN Media Alert. The spokesman said to ask UNCA. But UNCA never responded to the RSVP of Inner City Press through the Free UN Coalition for Access. In the middle of the event the claim was that UN correspondents didn't have to RSVP - not what the notice said. The event was not even in the June 26 UN Media Alert. Last week, Dujarric spoonfed sound bytes to a prominent UNCA members and is working with them to try to further restrict Inner City Press, here - Inner City Press was in fact ousted on June 22, video here, story here). The Free UN Coalition for Access questions this and the propriety of this explicit focus by the UN Correspondents Association on the UN's "causes" rather than simply covering the UN as it is; it and corruption are among the reasons Inner City Press quit UNCA (and co-founded FUNCA).

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