#leadership

Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family’s Plan to Keep Its Billions | The New Yorker
▻https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sackler-familys-plan-to-keep-its-billions

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Many pharmaceutical companies had a hand in creating the opioid crisis, an ongoing public-health emergency in which as many as half a million Americans have lost their lives. But Purdue, which is owned by the Sackler family, played a special role because it was the first to set out, in the nineteen-nineties, to persuade the American medical establishment that strong opioids should be much more widely prescribed—and that physicians’ longstanding fears about the addictive nature of such drugs were overblown. With the launch of OxyContin, in 1995, Purdue unleashed an unprecedented marketing blitz, pushing the use of powerful opioids for a huge range of ailments and asserting that its product led to addiction in “fewer than one percent” of patients. This strategy was a spectacular commercial success: according to Purdue, OxyContin has since generated approximately thirty billion dollars in revenue, making the Sacklers (whom I wrote about for the magazine, in 2017, and about whom I will publish a book next year) one of America’s richest families.

But OxyContin’s success also sparked a deadly crisis of addiction. Other pharmaceutical companies followed Purdue’s lead, introducing competing products; eventually, millions of Americans were struggling with opioid-use disorders. Many people who were addicted but couldn’t afford or access prescription drugs transitioned to heroin and black-market fentanyl. According to a recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal, the disruptions associated with the coronavirus have only intensified the opioid epidemic, and overdose deaths are accelerating. For all the complexity of this public-health crisis, there is now widespread agreement that its origins are relatively straightforward. New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has described OxyContin as the “taproot” of the epidemic. A recent study, by a team of economists from the Wharton School, Notre Dame, and RAND, reviewed overdose statistics in five states where Purdue opted, because of local regulations, to concentrate fewer resources in promoting its drug. The scholars found that, in those states, overdose rates—even from heroin and fentanyl—are markedly lower than in states where Purdue did the full marketing push. The study concludes that “the introduction and marketing of OxyContin explain a substantial share of overdose deaths over the last two decades.”

Arlen Specter, then a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, was unhappy with the deal. When the government fines a corporation instead of sending its executives to jail, he declared, it is essentially granting “expensive licenses for criminal misconduct.” After the settlement, Purdue kept marketing OxyContin aggressively and playing down its risks. (The company denies doing so.) Sales of the drug grew, eventually reaching more than two billion dollars annually. The fact that, thirteen years after the 2007 settlement, Purdue is alleged to have orchestrated another criminally overzealous campaign to push its opioids suggests that Specter was right: when the profits generated by crossing the line are enormous, fines aren’t much of a deterrent.

Ne jamais oublier la corruption

The Sacklers have long maintained that they and their company are blameless when it comes to the opioid crisis because OxyContin was fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But some of the more shocking passages in the prosecution memo involve previously unreported details about the F.D.A. official in charge of issuing that approval, Dr. Curtis Wright. Prosecutors discovered significant impropriety in the way that Wright shepherded the OxyContin application through the F.D.A., describing his relationship with the company as conspicuously “informal in nature.” Not long after Wright approved the drug for sale, he stepped down from his position. A year later, he took a job at Purdue. According to the prosecution memo, his first-year compensation package was at least three hundred and seventy-nine thousand dollars—roughly three times his previous salary. (Wright declined to comment.)

But, at the time, Purdue was being sued by forty-five other states, and David Sackler offered to resolve all the cases against the company and the family in a single grand gesture. A wave of headlines reported the news: “PURDUE PHARMA OFFERS $10-12 BILLION TO SETTLE OPIOID CLAIMS.”

This seemed like a significant figure, but the headlines were misleading. According to a term sheet in which attorneys for the Sacklers and Purdue laid out the particulars of this proposed “comprehensive settlement,” the Sacklers were prepared to make a guaranteed contribution of only three billion dollars. Further funds could be secured, the family suggested, by selling its international businesses and by converting Purdue Pharma into a “public benefit corporation” that would continue to yield revenue—by selling OxyContin and other opioids—but would no longer profit the Sacklers personally. This was a discomfiting, and somewhat brazen, suggestion: the Sacklers were proposing to remediate the damage of the opioid crisis with funds generated by continuing to sell the drug that had initiated the crisis. At the same time, the term sheet suggested, Purdue would supply new drugs to treat opioid addiction and counteract overdoses—though the practicalities of realizing this initiative, and the Sacklers’ estimate that it would represent four billion dollars in value, remained distinctly speculative.

When the attorneys general refused to consent to the deal, the Sacklers followed through on their threat, and Purdue declared bankruptcy. But, significantly, the Sacklers did not declare bankruptcy themselves. According to the case filed by James, the family had known as early as 2014 that the company could one day face the prospect of damaging judgments. To protect themselves on this day of reckoning, the lawsuit maintains, the Sacklers assiduously siphoned money out of Purdue and transferred it offshore, beyond the reach of U.S. authorities. A representative for Purdue told me that the drugmaker, when it declared bankruptcy, had cash and assets of roughly a billion dollars. In a deposition, one of the company’s own experts testified that the Sacklers had removed as much as thirteen billion dollars from Purdue. When the company announced that it was filing for Chapter 11, Stein derided the move as a sham. The Sacklers had “extracted nearly all the money out of Purdue and pushed the carcass of the company into bankruptcy,” he said. “Multi-billionaires are the opposite of bankrupt.”

You might think that this would leave open the possibility of future suits brought by states, but Drain has signalled a desire to foreclose those as well, maintaining that a blanket dispensation is a necessary component of the bankruptcy resolution. In February, he remarked that the “only way to get true peace, if the parties are prepared to support it and not fight it in a meaningful way, is to have a third-party release” that grants the Sacklers freedom from any future liability. This is a controversial issue, and Drain indicated that he was raising it early because in some parts of the country it’s illegal for a federal bankruptcy judge to grant a third-party release barring state authorities from bringing their own lawsuits. The case law is evolving, Drain said.

The Trump Administration has paid lip service to the importance of addressing the opioid crisis. Bill Barr, Trump’s Attorney General, has said that his “highest priority is dealing with the plague of drugs.” In practice, however, this has meant rhetoric about heroin coming from Mexico and fentanyl coming from China, rather than a sustained effort to hold the well-heeled malefactors of the American pharmaceutical industry to account. Richard Sackler once boasted, “We can get virtually every senator and congressman we want to talk to on the phone in the next seventy-two hours.” Although the Sacklers may now be social pariahs, the family’s money—and army of white-shoe fixers—means that they still exert political influence.

According to three attorneys familiar with the dynamics inside the Justice Department, career line prosecutors have pushed to sanction Purdue in a serious way, and have been alarmed by efforts by the department’s political leadership to soften the blow. Should that happen, it will mark a grim instance of Purdue’s history repeating itself: a robust federal investigation of the company being defanged, behind closed doors, by a coalition of Purdue lawyers and political appointees. And it seems likely, as was also the case in 2007, that this failure will be dressed up as a success: a guilty plea from the company, another fine.

In a statement to The New Yorker, a representative for the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler denied all wrongdoing, maintaining that family members on Purdue’s board “were consistently assured by management that all marketing of OxyContin was done in compliance with law.” The statement continued, “Our hearts go out to those affected by drug abuse and addiction,” adding that “the rise in opioid-related deaths is driven overwhelmingly by heroin and illicit fentanyl smuggled by drug traffickers into the U.S. from China and Mexico.” At “the conclusion of this process,” the statement suggested, “all of Purdue’s documents” will be publicly disclosed, “making clear that the Sackler family acted ethically and responsibly at all times.”

The states have asserted in legal filings that the total cost of the opioid crisis exceeds two trillion dollars. Relative to that number, the three billion dollars that the Sacklers are guaranteeing in their offer is miniscule. It is also a small number relative to the fortune that the Sacklers appear likely to retain, which could be three or four times that amount. As the March filing by the states opposed to the deal argued, “When your illegal marketing campaign causes a national crisis, you should not get to keep most of the money.” What the Sacklers are offering simply “does not match what they owe.”

Nevertheless, in absolute terms, three billion dollars is still a significant sum—and the Sacklers have made it clear that they are prepared to pay it only in the event that they are granted a release from future liability. It may be that the magnitude of the dollars at stake will persuade Drain, the Justice Department officials on the case, and even the state attorneys general who initially rejected the Sacklers’ proposal to sign off. The problem, one attorney familiar with the case said, is that “criminal liability is not something that should be sold,” adding, “It should not depend on how rich they are. It’s not right.”

#Opioides #Sackler #Patrick_Radden_Keefe

Ceci devrait faire la Une des journaux (mais j’en doute) : International Criminal Court officials sanctioned by US
▻https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54003527

The Hague-based ICC is currently investigating whether US forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

The US has criticised the court since its foundation and is one of a dozen states which have not signed up.

[…]

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in June, which allows the US to block the assets of ICC employees and stop them entering the country.

Addressing reporters on Wednesday, Mr Pompeo said Ms Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko, the head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division, were to be sanctioned under this order.

Dismissing the ICC as a “thoroughly broken and corrupted institution”, he said those who continued to “materially support those individuals risk exposure to sanctions as well”.

Le plus grand shithole country du monde ne déçoit jamais.

America’s window of opportunity to beat back #Covid-19 is closing
▻https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/10/winter-is-coming-as-flu-season-nears-americas-window-of-opportunity-to-bea

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“We should be aiming for no transmission before we open the schools and we put kids in harm’s way — kids and teachers and their caregivers. And so, if that means no gym, no movie theaters, so be it,” said Caroline Buckee, associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“We seem to be choosing leisure activities now over children’s safety in a month’s time. And I cannot understand that tradeoff.”

While many countries managed to suppress spread of #SARS-CoV-2, the United States has failed miserably. Countries in Europe and Asia are worrying about a second wave. Here, the first wave rages on, engulfing rural as well as urban parts of the country. Though there’s been a slight decline in cases in the past couple of weeks, more than 50,000 Americans a day are being diagnosed with Covid-19. And those are just the confirmed cases.

#états-unis #leadership

Stephen Walt sur Twitter : “A country that cannot convince its own citizens to wear masks to halt a pandemic has no business toppling foreign governments and trying to remake whole societies that it barely understands. #COVID19 #Nationbuilding” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/stephenWalt/status/1276173537850675201

#etats-unis #leadership

Asylum Outsourced : McKinsey’s Secret Role in Europe’s Refugee Crisis

In 2016 and 2017, US management consultancy giant #McKinsey was at the heart of efforts in Europe to accelerate the processing of asylum applications on over-crowded Greek islands and salvage a controversial deal with Turkey, raising concerns over the outsourcing of public policy on refugees.

The language was more corporate boardroom than humanitarian crisis – promises of ‘targeted strategies’, ‘maximising productivity’ and a ‘streamlined end-to-end asylum process.’

But in 2016 this was precisely what the men and women of McKinsey&Company, the elite US management consultancy, were offering the European Union bureaucrats struggling to set in motion a pact with Turkey to stem the flow of asylum seekers to the continent’s shores.

In March of that year, the EU had agreed to pay Turkey six billion euros if it would take back asylum seekers who had reached Greece – many of them fleeing fighting in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – and prevent others from trying to cross its borders.

The pact – which human rights groups said put at risk the very right to seek refuge – was deeply controversial, but so too is the previously unknown extent of McKinsey’s influence over its implementation, and the lengths some EU bodies went to conceal that role.

According to the findings of this investigation, months of ‘pro bono’ fieldwork by McKinsey fed, sometimes verbatim, into the highest levels of EU policy-making regarding how to make the pact work on the ground, and earned the consultancy a contract – awarded directly, without competition – worth almost one million euros to help enact that very same policy.

The bloc’s own internal procurement watchdog later deemed the contract “irregular”.

Questions have already been asked about McKinsey’s input in 2015 into German efforts to speed up its own turnover of asylum applications, with concerns expressed about rights being denied to those applying.

This investigation, based on documents sought since November 2017, sheds new light on the extent to which private management consultants shaped Europe’s handling of the crisis on the ground, and how bureaucrats tried to keep that role under wraps.

“If some companies develop programs which then turn into political decisions, this is a political issue of concern that should be examined carefully,” said German MEP Daniel Freund, a member of the European Parliament’s budget committee and a former Head of Advocacy for EU Integrity at Transparency International.

“Especially if the same companies have afterwards been awarded with follow-up contracts not following due procedures.”

Deal too important to fail

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The March 2016 deal was the culmination of an epic geopolitical thriller played out in Brussels, Ankara and a host of European capitals after more than 850,000 people – mainly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans – took to the Aegean by boat and dinghy from Turkey to Greece the previous year.

Turkey, which hosts some 3.5 million refugees from the nine-year-old war in neighbouring Syria, committed to take back all irregular asylum seekers who travelled across its territory in return for billions of euros in aid, EU visa liberalisation for Turkish citizens and revived negotiations on Turkish accession to the bloc. It also provided for the resettlement in Europe of one Syrian refugee from Turkey for each Syrian returned to Turkey from Greece.

The EU hailed it as a blueprint, but rights groups said it set a dangerous precedent, resting on the premise that Turkey is a ‘safe third country’ to which asylum seekers can be returned, despite a host of rights that it denies foreigners seeking protection.

The deal helped cut crossings over the Aegean, but it soon became clear that other parts were not delivering; the centrepiece was an accelerated border procedure for handling asylum applications within 15 days, including appeal. This wasn’t working, while new movement restrictions meant asylum seekers were stuck on Greek islands.

But for the EU, the deal was too important to be derailed.

“The directions from the European Commission, and those behind it, was that Greece had to implement the EU-Turkey deal full-stop, no matter the legal arguments or procedural issue you might raise,” said Marianna Tzeferakou, a lawyer who was part of a legal challenge to the notion that Turkey is a safe place to seek refuge.

“Someone gave an order that this deal will start being implemented. Ambiguity and regulatory arbitrage led to a collapse of procedural guarantees. It was a political decision and could not be allowed to fail.”

Enter McKinsey.

Action plans emerge simultaneously

Fresh from advising Germany on how to speed up the processing of asylum applications, the firm’s consultants were already on the ground doing research in Greece in the summer of 2016, according to two sources working with the Greek asylum service, GAS, at the time but who did not wish to be named.

Documents seen by BIRN show that the consultancy was already in “initial discussions” with an EU body called the ‘Structural Reform Support Service’, SRSS, which aids member states in designing and implementing structural reforms and was at the time headed by Dutchman Maarten Verwey. Verwey was simultaneously EU coordinator for the EU-Turkey deal and is now the EU’s director general of economic and financial affairs, though he also remains acting head of SRSS.

Asked for details of these ‘discussions’, Verwey responded that the European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – “does not hold any other documents” concerning the matter.

Nevertheless, by September 2016, McKinsey had a pro bono proposal on the table for how it could help out, entitled ‘Supporting the European Commission through integrated refugee management.’ Verwey signed off on it in October.

Minutes of management board meetings of the European Asylum Support Office, EASO – the EU’s asylum agency – show McKinsey was tasked by the Commission to “analyse the situation on the Greek islands and come up with an action plan that would result in an elimination of the backlog” of asylum cases by April 2017.

A spokesperson for the Commission told BIRN: “McKinsey volunteered to work free of charge to improve the functioning of the Greek asylum and reception system.”

Over the next 12 weeks, according to other redacted documents, McKinsey worked with all the major actors involved – the SRSS, EASO, the EU border agency Frontex as well as Greek authorities.

At bi-weekly stakeholder meetings, McKinsey identified “bottlenecks” in the asylum process and began to outline a series of measures to reduce the backlog, some of which were already being tested in a “mini-pilot” on the Greek island of Chios.

At a first meeting in mid-October, McKinsey consultants told those present that “processing rates” of asylum cases by the EASO and the Greek asylum service, as well as appeals bodies, would need to significantly increase.

By December, McKinsey’s “action plan” was ready, involving “targeted strategies and recommendations” for each actor involved.

The same month, on December 8, Verwey released the EU’s own Joint Action Plan for implementing the EU-Turkey deal, which was endorsed by the EU’s heads of government on December 15.

There was no mention of any McKinsey involvement and when asked about the company’s role the Commission told BIRN the plan was “a document elaborated together between the Commission and the Greek authorities.”

However, buried in the EASO’s 2017 Annual Report is a reference to European Council endorsement of “the consultancy action plan” to clear the asylum backlog.

Indeed, the similarities between McKinsey’s plan and the EU’s Joint Action Plan are uncanny, particularly in terms of increasing detention capacity on the islands, “segmentation” of cases, ramping up numbers of EASO and GAS caseworkers and interpreters and Frontex escort officers, limiting the number of appeal steps in the asylum process and changing the way appeals are processed and opinions drafted.

In several instances, they are almost identical: where McKinsey recommends introducing “overarching segmentation by case types to increase speed and quality”, for example, the EU’s Joint Action Plan calls for “segmentation by case categories to increase speed and quality”.

Much of what McKinsey did for the SRSS remains redacted.

In June 2019, the Commission justified the non-disclosure on the basis that the information would pose a “risk” to “public security” as it could allegedly “be exploited by third parties (for example smuggling networks)”.

Full disclosure, it argued, would risk “seriously undermining the commercial interests” of McKinsey.

“While I understand that there could indeed be a private and public interest in the subject matter covered by the documents requested, I consider that such a public interest in transparency would not, in this case, outweigh the need to protect the commercial interests of the company concerned,” Martin Selmayr, then secretary-general of the European Commission, wrote.

SRSS rejected the suggestion that the fact that Verwey refused to fully disclose the McKinsey proposal he had signed off on in October 2016 represented a possible conflict of interest, according to internal documents obtained during this investigation.

Once Europe’s leaders had endorsed the Joint Action Plan, EASO was asked to “conclude a direct contract with McKinsey” to assist in its implementation, according to EASO management board minutes.

‘Political pressure’

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The contract, worth 992,000 euros, came with an attached ‘exception note’ signed on January 20, 2017, by EASO’s Executive Director at the time, Jose Carreira, and Joanna Darmanin, the agency’s then head of operations. The note stated that “due to the time constraints and the political pressure it was deemed necessary to proceed with the contract to be signed without following the necessary procurement procedure”.

The following year, an audit of EASO yearly accounts by the European Court of Auditors, ECA, which audits EU finances, found that “a single pre-selected economic operator” had been awarded work without the application of “any of the procurement procedures” laid down under EU regulations, designed to encourage transparency and competition.

“Therefore, the public procurement procedure and all related payments (992,000 euros) were irregular,” it said.

The auditor’s report does not name McKinsey. But it does specify that the “irregular” contract concerned the EASO’s hiring of a consultancy for implementation of the action plan in Greece; the amount cited by the auditor exactly matches the one in the McKinsey contract, while a spokesman for the EASO indirectly confirmed the contracts concerned were one and the same.

When asked about the McKinsey contract, the spokesman, Anis Cassar, said: “EASO does not comment on specifics relating to individual contracts, particularly where the ECA is concerned. However, as you note, ECA found that the particular procurement procedure was irregular (not illegal).”

“The procurement was carried under [sic] exceptional procurement rules in the context of the pressing requests by the relevant EU Institutions and Member States,” said EASO spokesman Anis Cassar.

McKinsey’s deputy head of Global Media Relations, Graham Ackerman, said the company was unable to provide any further details.

“In line with our firm’s values and confidentiality policy, we do not publicly discuss our clients or details of our client service,” Ackerman told BIRN.

‘Evaluation, feedback, goal-setting’

It was not the first time questions had been asked of the EASO’s procurement record.

In October 2017, the EU’s fraud watchdog, OLAF, launched a probe into the agency (▻https://www.politico.eu/article/jose-carreira-olaf-anti-fraud-office-investigates-eu-asylum-agency-director), chiefly concerning irregularities identified in 2016. It contributed to the resignation in June 2018 of Carreira (▻https://www.politico.eu/article/jose-carreira-easo-under-investigation-director-of-eu-asylum-agency-steps-d), who co-signed the ‘exception note’ on the McKinsey contract. The investigation eventually uncovered wrongdoings ranging from breaches of procurement rules to staff harassment (▻https://www.politico.eu/article/watchdog-finds-misconduct-at-european-asylum-support-office-harassment), Politico reported in November 2018.

According to the EASO, the McKinsey contract was not part of OLAF’s investigation. OLAF said it could not comment.

McKinsey’s work went ahead, running from January until April 2017, the point by which the EU wanted the backlog of asylum cases “eliminated” and the burden on overcrowded Greek islands lifted.

Overseeing the project was a steering committee comprised of Verwey, Carreira, McKinsey staff and senior Greek and European Commission officials.

The details of McKinsey’s operation are contained in a report it submitted in May 2017.

The EASO initially refused to release the report, citing its “sensitive and restrictive nature”. Its disclosure, the agency said, would “undermine the protection of public security and international relations, as well as the commercial interests and intellectual property of McKinsey & Company.”

The response was signed by Carreira.

Only after a reporter on this story complained to the EU Ombudsman, did the EASO agree to disclose several sections of the report.

Running to over 1,500 pages, the disclosed material provides a unique insight into the role of a major private consultancy in what has traditionally been the realm of public policy – the right to asylum.

In the jargon of management consultancy, the driving logic of McKinsey’s intervention was “maximising productivity” – getting as many asylum cases processed as quickly as possible, whether they result in transfers to the Greek mainland, in the case of approved applications, or the deportation of “returnable migrants” to Turkey.

“Performance management systems” were introduced to encourage speed, while mechanisms were created to “monitor” the weekly “output” of committees hearing the appeals of rejected asylum seekers.

Time spent training caseworkers and interviewers before they were deployed was to be reduced, IT support for the Greek bureaucracy was stepped up and police were instructed to “detain migrants immediately after they are notified of returnable status,” i.e. as soon as their asylum applications were rejected.

Four employees of the Greek asylum agency at the time told BIRN that McKinsey had access to agency staff, but said the consultancy’s approach jarred with the reality of the situation on the ground.

Taking part in a “leadership training” course held by McKinsey, one former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told BIRN: “It felt so incompatible with the mentality of a public service operating in a camp for asylum seekers.”

The official said much of what McKinsey was proposing had already been considered and either implemented or rejected by GAS.

“The main ideas of how to organise our work had already been initiated by the HQ of GAS,” the official said. “The only thing McKinsey added were corporate methods of evaluation, feedback, setting goals, and initiatives that didn’t add anything meaningful.”

Indeed, the backlog was proving hard to budge.

Throughout successive “progress updates”, McKinsey repeatedly warned the steering committee that productivity “levels are insufficient to reach target”. By its own admission, deportations never surpassed 50 a week during the period of its contract. The target was 340.

In its final May 2017 report, McKinsey touted its success in “reducing total process duration” of the asylum procedure to a mere 11 days, down from an average of 170 days in February 2017.

Yet thousands of asylum seekers remained trapped in overcrowded island camps for months on end.

While McKinsey claimed that the population of asylum seekers on the island was cut to 6,000 by April 2017, pending “data verification” by Greek authorities, Greek government figures put the number at 12,822, just around 1,500 fewer than in January when McKinsey got its contract.

The winter was harsh; organisations working with asylum seekers documented a series of accidents in which a number of people were harmed or killed, with insufficient or no investigation undertaken by Greek authorities (▻https://www.proasyl.de/en/news/greek-hotspots-deaths-not-to-be-forgotten).

McKinsey’s final report tallied 40 field visits and more than 200 meetings and workshops on the islands. It also, interestingly, counted 21 weekly steering committee meetings “since October 2016” – connecting McKinsey’s 2016 pro bono work and the 2017 period it worked under contract with the EASO. Indeed, in its “project summary”, McKinsey states it was “invited” to work on both the “development” and “implementation” of the action plan in Greece.

The Commission, however, in its response to this investigation, insisted it did not “pre-select” McKinsey for the 2017 work or ask EASO to sign a contract with the firm.

Smarting from military losses in Syria and political setbacks at home, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tore up the deal with the EU in late February this year, accusing Brussels of failing to fulfil its side of the bargain. But even before the deal’s collapse, 7,000 refugees and migrants reached Greek shores in the first two months of 2020, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

German link

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This was not the first time that the famed consultancy firm had left its mark on Europe’s handling of the crisis.

In what became a political scandal (▻https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/bamf-skandal-im-news-ticker-jetzt-muessen-sich-seehofer-und-cordt-den-fragen-d), the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, according to reports, paid McKinsey more than €45 million (▻https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/politik/Millionenzahlungen-Was-hat-McKinsey-beim-Bamf-gemacht-id512950) to help clear a backlog of more than 270,000 asylum applications and to shorten the asylum process.

German media reports said the sum included 3.9 million euros for “Integrated Refugee Management”, the same phrase McKinsey pitched to the EU in September 2016.

The parallels don’t end there.

Much like the contract McKinsey clinched with the EASO in January 2017, German media reports have revealed that more than half of the sum paid to the consultancy for its work in Germany was awarded outside of normal public procurement procedures on the grounds of “urgency”. Der Spiegel (▻https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/fluechtlinge-in-deutschland-mckinsey-erhielt-mehr-als-20-millionen-euro-a-11) reported that the firm also did hundreds of hours of pro bono work prior to clinching the contract. McKinsey denied that it worked for free in order to win future federal contracts.

Again, the details were classified as confidential.

Arne Semsrott, director of the German transparency NGO FragdenStaat, which investigated McKinsey’s work in Germany, said the lack of transparency in such cases was costing European taxpayers money and control.

Asked about German and EU efforts to keep the details of such outsourcing secret, Semsrott told BIRN: “The lack of transparency means the public spending more money on McKinsey and other consulting firms. And this lack of transparency also means that we have a lack of public control over what is actually happening.”

Sources familiar with the decision-making in Athens identified Solveigh Hieronimus, a McKinsey partner based in Munich, as the coordinator of the company’s team on the EASO contract in Greece. Hieronimus was central in pitching the company’s services to the German government, according to German media reports (▻https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-147594782.html).

Hieronimus did not respond to BIRN questions submitted by email.

Freund, the German MEP formerly of Transparency International, said McKinsey’s role in Greece was a cause for concern.

“It is not ideal if positions adopted by the [European] Council are in any way affected by outside businesses,” he told BIRN. “These decisions should be made by politicians based on legal analysis and competent independent advice.”

A reporter on this story again complained to the EU Ombudsman in July 2019 regarding the Commission’s refusal to disclose further details of its dealings with McKinsey.

In November, the Ombudsman told the Commission that “the substance of the funded project, especially the work packages and deliverable of the project[…] should be fully disclosed”, citing the principle that “the public has a right to be informed about the content of projects that are financed by public money.” The Ombudsman rejected the Commission’s argument that partial disclosure would undermine the commercial interests of McKinsey.

Commission President Ursula von Der Leyen responded that the Commission “respectfully disagrees” with the Ombudsman. The material concerned, she wrote, “contains sensitive information on the business strategies and the commercial relations of the company concerned.”

The president of the Commission has had dealings with McKinsey before; in February, von der Leyen testified before a special Bundestag committee concerning contracts worth tens of millions of euros that were awarded to external consultants, including McKinsey, during her time as German defence minister in 2013-2019.

In 2018, Germany’s Federal Audit Office said procedures for the award of some contracts had not been strictly lawful or cost-effective. Von der Leyen acknowledged irregularities had occurred but said that much had been done to fix the shortcomings (▻https://www.ft.com/content/4634a3ea-4e71-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5).

She was also questioned about her 2014 appointment of Katrin Suder, a McKinsey executive, as state secretary tasked with reforming the Bundeswehr’s system of procurement. Asked if Suder, who left the ministry in 2018, had influenced the process of awarding contracts, von der Leyen said she assumed not. Decisions like that were taken “way below my pay level,” she said.

In its report, Germany’s governing parties absolved von der Leyen of blame, Politico reported on June 9 (▻https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-german-governing-parties-contracting-scandal).

The EU Ombudsman is yet to respond to the Commission’s refusal to grant further access to the McKinsey documents.

▻https://balkaninsight.com/2020/06/22/asylum-outsourced-mckinseys-secret-role-in-europes-refugee-crisis
#accord_UE-Turquie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #externalisation #privatisation #sous-traitance #Turquie #EU #UE #Union_européenne #Grèce #frontières #Allemagne #EASO #Structural_Reform_Support_Service (#SRSS) #Maarten_Verwey #Frontex #Chios #consultancy #Joint_Action_Plan #Martin_Selmayr #chronologie #Jose_Carreira #Joanna_Darmanin #privatisation #management #productivité #leadership_training #îles #Mer_Egée #Integrated_Refugee_Management #pro_bono #transparence #Solveigh_Hieronimus #Katrin_Suder

ping @_kg_ @karine4 @isskein @rhoumour @reka

What Do Countries With The Best Coronavirus Responses Have In Common ? Women Leaders
▻https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/04/13/what-do-countries-with-the-best-coronavirus-reponses-have-in-common-women-leaders/#318f56f53dec

https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/fit-in/1200x0/filters%3Aformat%28jpg%29/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F5e943b0501879f0006d27c2f%2F0x0.jpg

From Iceland to Taiwan and from Germany to New Zealand, women are stepping up to show the world how to manage a messy patch for our human family. Add in Finland, Iceland and Denmark, and this pandemic is revealing that women have what it takes when the heat rises in our Houses of State. Many will say these are small countries, or islands, or other exceptions. But Germany is large and leading, and the UK is an island with very different outcomes. These leaders are gifting us an attractive alternative way of wielding power. What are they teaching us?

L’article parle de décisions prises en toute transparence, rapidement, avec l’aide de la technique (des tests, quoi) et des discours humains qui ne sentaient pas la com. Bon. Intéressant.

#femmes_politiques #femmes #gouvernance

Robert Reich sur Twitter : “In the world’s richest nation:

Food lines stretching for miles.

Mass graves.

Homeless sleeping in parking lots on socially-distanced grids.

Nurses without adequate protective gear.

Essential workers without paid sick leave.

Ventilator shortages.

This is unacceptable.” /

Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1249069139974443009

#etats-unis #insane #perversion #milliers_de_milliards #leadership

Why Coronavirus Testing in the U.S. Is So Delayed - The Atlantic
▻https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why-coronavirus-testing-us-so-delayed/607954

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/yPVK9tRfVPgEcVKpqslpfF5tUeE=/0x43:2000x1085/960x500/media/img/mt/2020/03/0320_Khazan_Martin_NoTests/original.jpg

Bureaucracy, equipment shortages, an unwillingness to share, and failed #leadership doomed the American response to COVID-19.

#etats-unis #coronavirus

Research: The Downsides of Trying to Appear Ethical (▻https://hbr.or...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/10425660

Research: The Downsides of Trying to Appear Ethical | #appearance #ethics #leadership #limits #management

Why Feedback Rarely Does What It’s Meant To (▻https://hbr.org/2019/0...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/9998277

Why Feedback Rarely Does What It’s Meant To | #bestof #bias #cognition #errors #excellence #failures #fallacy #feedback #judgment #leadership #learning #management #psychometrics #radicalcandor #selfevaluation #truth

A Shadowy Industry Group Shapes Food Policy Around the World - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/health/ilsi-food-policy-india-brazil-china.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/09/17/science/00ILSI4/00ILSI4-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg

[T]he #International_Life_Sciences_Institute, an American nonprofit with an innocuous sounding name [...] has been quietly infiltrating government health and #nutrition bodies around the world.

Created four decades ago by a top #Coca-Cola executive, the institute now has branches in 17 countries. It is almost entirely funded by Goliaths of the agribusiness, food and pharmaceutical industries.

The organization, which championed tobacco interests during the 1980s and 1990s in Europe and the United States, has more recently expanded its activities in Asia and Latin America, regions that provide a growing share of food company profits. It has been especially active in China, India and Brazil, the world’s first, second and sixth most populous nations.

In China, the institute shares both staff and office space with the agency responsible for combating the country’s epidemic of obesity-related illness. In Brazil, #ILSI representatives occupy seats on a number of food and nutrition panels that were previously reserved for university researchers.

And in India, Dr. Sesikeran’s #leadership role on the food labeling committee has raised questions about whether regulators will ultimately be swayed by processed food manufacturers who say the red warning #labels would hurt sales.

“What could possibly go wrong?” Amit Srivastava, the coordinator of the advocacy group India Resource Center, asked sarcastically. “To have a covert food lobby group deciding public health policy is wrong and a blatant conflict of interest.”

#états-unis #santé #sucres #agro-business #irresponsables #politiques

These 90 Army posts have contaminated drinking water
▻https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/09/11/these-90-army-posts-have-contaminated-drinking-water

https://www.armytimes.com/resizer/hnPyv71Uuw2gYxcg6wZdLKu1-6I=/1200x630/filters:quality(100)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/72SWKANUYRGF7DOMWLEH2NBGKY.JPG

Exposure to the chemicals ― found in firefighting foam used not only in vehicle or aircraft incidents on military bases, but in numerous training drills over decades ― has been linked to #cancer and other health issues.

Though the Army is following #EPA regulations, according to the EWG, their 70 ppt guideline is “70 times higher than the 1 ppt safe level found by some independent studies and endorsed by EWG,” according to the organization’s release. “Some states have set limits ranging from 11 ppt to 20 ppt.”

[...]

“ The Pentagon has cited EPA’s failure to designate PFAS as ‘hazardous substances’ under the federal Superfund law as one reason for its refusal to clean up #PFAS contamination,” according to the release.

#Substances_alkylées_per_et_polyfluorées #forever_chemicals #eau #Agences_de_dérégulation #pentagone #toxiques #santé #carcinogènes #états-unis
#leadership

Government watchdog details severe trauma suffered by separated children | TheHill
▻https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/459899-government-watchdog-details-severe-trauma-suffered-by-separated-chil

https://thehill.com/sites/default/files/immigrant_children_1_0.jpg

#états-unis #leadership #migrants #enfants

Les #femmes de #pouvoir

En ce début de XXIe siècle, les voix féminines se font de mieux en mieux entendre. Démonstration avec les parcours de femmes de conviction : Hillary Clinton, Michelle Bachelet, Inna Shevchenko. Une révolution tranquille est en marche. Petit à petit, le combat pour l’égalité des sexes progresse, dans les coulisses du pouvoir comme dans certains villages du tiers-monde. Aux quatre coins de la planète, à travers leurs trajectoires mêmes, des femmes contribuent à inspirer cette volonté de changement. Ce documentaire passe en revue leurs réussites et leurs combats : les militantes indiennes et nigériennes luttant pour leurs droits, mais aussi des personnalités telles que Christine Lagarde, Michelle Bachelet ou la Femen Inna Shevchenko. D’autres femmes engagées, comme Hillary Clinton, la théologienne Margot Käßmann (ex-évêque de Hanovre) et Melinda Gates, s’expriment dans ce film et donnent leur point de vue sur la condition féminine. Un documentaire qui montre comment, peu à peu, leurs comparses font tomber les barrières qui les empêchaient d’avancer.

▻https://www.senscritique.com/film/Les_femmes_de_pouvoir/19821282
#film #documentaire
#politique_étrangère_féministe #égalité #leadership_féminin #maternité #Christine_Lagarde #Minouche_Shafik #revenu #quota_féminin #Angela_Merkel #droits_des_femmes #féminisme #Michelle_Bachelet #préjugés #politique #Inde #Daphne_Jayasinghe #toilettes #corruption #Suède #Chili

#Margot_Wallström, qui déclare :

«Sexual violence against women is not cultural, is criminal»

#violences_sexuelles #viol

#viol_comme_arme_de_guerre #sens_de_culpabilité #armes #commerce_d'armes #Haifaa_al-Mansour #invisibilité #invisibilisation #Arabie_Saoudite #sous-représentation_féminine #religion

#femmes_du_mur (#mur_des_lamentations)

#Elana_Sztokman —> #mouvement_féministe_juif_orthodoxe
(#judaïsme #judaïsme_orthodoxe)

ligne de bus « #meandrine » (= de stricte observance)

#ségrégation #patriarcat #radicalisme_religieux #Femen #auto-détermination #mariage_forcé #Niger #mortalité_maternelle #droit_à_l'avortement #avortement #droits_sexuels_et_reproductifs #IVG #Morena_Herera

#El_Salvador #Las_17 (▻https://las17.org)

#machisme
contrôle de la #fertilité

Incroyable maire d’un village en #Inde :
#Chhavi_Rajawat

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Chhavi_Rajawat_at_the_World_Economic_Forum_on_India_2012.jpg/220px-Chhavi_Rajawat_at_the_World_Economic_Forum_on_India_2012.jpg

Opinion | The #Boeing #737_Max Crisis Is a #Leadership Failure - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/boeing-737-max.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/07/17/opinion/17hallgoelz/17hallgoelz-facebookJumbo.jpg

Boeing has found a willing partner in the #F.A.A., which allowed the company to circumvent standard #certification processes so it could sell aircraft more quickly. Boeing’s inadequate regard for safety and the F.A.A.’s complicity display an unconscionable lack of leadership at both organizations.

[...]

The 737 Max of today — a 143-foot-long plane seating more than 230 people — is a very different aircraft from the humble 737 of the 1960s, [...] But the current regulatory system allows for significant modifications of an aircraft design without requiring a new certification review . Even though the new plane had different flight characteristics, larger engines and a new flight management system, no simulator training was required for pilots familiar with older model 737s, a marketing move designed by Boeing to increase sales. And the F.A.A. allowed this.

Safety begins at the top, and the top at both Boeing and the F.A.A. has let us down. Boeing’s board must find out who has enabled and encouraged this corporate culture, and hold those leaders accountable, beginning with the chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg.

But this is bigger than the Max 8. We now have an airline safety agency that has become less and less forceful in exercising its regulatory authority over an aircraft manufacturer, even one that appears to be aggressively prioritizing profits over safety.

#complicité #criminalité_en_col_blanc

Nearly All U.S. Visa Applicants Now Required To Submit 5-Year Social Media History | HuffPost
▻https://www.huffpost.com/entry/visa-social-media-state-department_n_5cf4898ce4b0e8085e3bfde1

https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5cf492c0210000690de68b03.jpeg?cache=ggrzpbaxsl&ops=1910_1000

Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said the new policy was a “dangerous and problematic proposal.”

It “does nothing to protect security concerns but raises significant privacy concerns and First Amendment issues for citizens and immigrants,” Shamsi told the Times. “Research shows that this kind of monitoring has chilling effects, meaning that people are less likely to speak freely and connect with each other in online communities that are now essential to modern life.”

#etats-unis #visas “#démocratie” #leadership #monde_libre

U.S. military stops tracking key metric on Afghan war as situation deteriorates - Reuters
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-military-idUSKCN1S734C

Les #États-Unis ont cessé de mesurer le degré de contrôle du territoire du pays par le gouvernement de Kaboul soutenu par l’Occident.
▻https://news-24.fr/les-etats-unis-etablissent-des-indicateurs-cles-pour-la-surveillance-des-gou
▻https://news-24.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/5cc96e37fc7e9367598b45c6.JPG

La Mission de soutien à l’#OTAN Resolute, dirigée par les États-Unis, a cessé de mesurer le degré de contrôle du territoire du pays par le gouvernement de Kaboul soutenu par l’Occident, a écrit John Sopko, Inspecteur général pour la reconstruction en #Afghanistan (SIGAR) un rapport trimestriel.

[...]

Sopko, dont le rôle est de surveiller la manière dont les États-Unis dépensent de l’argent pour leur présence militaire en Afghanistan, a déclaré à Reuters que cette décision du commandement était un autre coup porté à la transparence déjà amoindrie de la politique de Washington dans le pays.

#leadership

La #banlieue jaune. Enquête sur les recompositions d’un mouvement

Loin d’être sans leader, le mouvement des gilets jaunes est constamment traversé par des luttes de leadership. L’ethnographie d’un #rond-point de mobilisation et des tensions qui traversent différents groupes de l’agglomération lyonnaise permet de mieux comprendre l’inscription dans le temps de ce mouvement.

https://laviedesidees.fr/local/cache-vignettes/L600xH372/arton4403-274e2.jpg?1556292447#.jpg

South Sudan hires U.S. lobbyists to help block war #crimes court - contract - Reuters
▻https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-southsudan-justice-idUKKCN1S51YW

https://medias.liberation.fr/photo/305674-salva-kiir-le-8-janvier-2011-a-juba.jpg?modified_at=1310208842&width=960

#Soudan_du_Sud : un contrat de #lobbying qui risque de promouvoir l’#impunité - RFI
▻http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20190429-soudan-sud-contrat-lobbying-bloquer-creation-cour-justice-impunite

C’est un contrat de deux ans signé le 18 avril entre Juba et Gainful Solutions. Pour 3,7 millions de dollars, cette société américaine de lobbying est chargée d’aider à améliorer les relations entre le pays et l’administration Trump. Mais aussi de persuader Washington d’annuler les #sanctions en vigueur contre Juba et de bloquer des sanctions potentielles.

Or, l’accord va plus loin. L’entreprise californienne doit également « retarder et au final bloquer la mise en place d’une cour hybride » au Soudan du Sud. Une institution cruciale prévue par l’accord de #paix de septembre.

Nyagoah Tut Pur, la chercheuse qui a révélé l’existence du document, explique que « cette cour est un pilier pour la paix et une exigence de la population essentielle à la stabilité ».

#Etats-Unis #leadership

Why I Hate The Idea Of The “Side Hustle”
▻https://hackernoon.com/why-i-hate-the-idea-of-the-side-hustle-347f6f0deb2e?source=rss----3a8144

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/940/1*Mlq7UD27fWgFLVJHj3qzrQ.png

Originally Posted HereI hate the idea of the side hustle.Let me explain.Since I was 16 I had a knack for picking up 2–3 jobs at one time. Sometimes I did it on purpose, other times it honestly just happened.It started first when I was working as a cook in fine dining and one of the Chefs went to another restaurant and asked me to come along. Rather than quit my current gig, I decided to keep both jobs. Soon, that very same Chef asked me to deliver some micro greens (like micro beets, micro basil, etc) for 20 dollars an hour, which at the time (and even now) was amazing! So of course, I took him up on that offer as well. When I graduated from college I began working as a data engineer and this pattern continuedQuickly after entering the corporate world, I had a director who left come to me (...)

#leadership #business #startup #self-improvement #development

Public Citizen sur Twitter :

“-A coal lobbyist runs the EPA

–An oil lobbyist runs the DOI

–A Monsanto exec runs US Fish & Wildlife

–A BP oil attorney is the nation’s top enviro lawyer -

–A fossil fuel lobbyist is the EPA’s air pollution chief

–A big energy insider regulates our power grid

Happy #EarthDay” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1120372073816260610

#Etats-Unis #Leadership #intérêts_privés #protection #intérêt_général #lobbying

US threatens to veto UN resolution on rape as weapon of war, officials say | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/22/us-un-resolution-rape-weapon-of-war-veto

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2ece9c95b27a59701215bbe4909599d5d6b007f8/0_170_4838_2903/master/4838.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&s=c706aaf53af3b3c815d10c018e1241ca

Et même de manière rétroactive,

In cases of disagreement in the security council, member states often fall back on previously agreed text, but the US has made it clear it would no longer accept language from a 2013 #resolution on sexual #violence.

#viol #onu #etats-unis #leadership

The Mindset Of The #startup Founders
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-mindset-of-the-startup-founders-4b22c0b0d1d7?source=rss----3a8144eab

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*xG-afdlHb0eyzrnKP928tQ.jpeg

What Goes Into The Mind Of Startup Founders?Idea is powerful but not until it becomes actionable and get the validation by real user.We are living in the era where the word impossible seems to be challenged by young dare-devils. For them every problem seems to be like an opportunity to make an impact. They are not limited by their thoughts, they want to fight, they want to try, failures are no more stopping them, they have all the courage to stand up and face and grow up.That is the spirit which is shaping the current world of today, fostering new energy and giving birth to new kind of innovation. I have been fortunate enough to meet many startup founders and also being a startup founder myself, this topic very close to my heart. It very relevant in the current dynamics to understand (...)

#business #technology #entrepreneurship #leadership

Aux #Etats-Unis, le nombre de #travailleurs de plus de 85 ans grimpe en flèche - Capital.fr
►https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/aux-etats-unis-le-nombre-de-travailleurs-de-plus-de-85-ans-grimpe-en-fleche-

https://cap.img.pmdstatic.net/fit/http.3A.2F.2Fprd2-bone-image.2Es3-website-eu-west-1.2Eamazonaws.2Ecom.2Fcap.2F2018.2F07.2F12.2F95615ba5-8ac9-421d-a39b-de0552264869.2Ejpeg/1200x630/background-color/ffffff/quality/70/aux-etats-unis-le-nombre-de-travailleurs-de-plus-de-85-ans-grimpe-en-fleche-1297716.jpg

Article de juillet 2018

Exactement, « 4,4 % de cette classe d’âge continue à travailler, contre 2,6 % en 2006 », précise un article du Washington Post. Le papier explique que cela concerne 255 000 Américains qui occupent toutes sortes d’#emplois comme « brigadiers, fermiers, éleveurs ou encore camionneurs ».

Un triste constat qui touche toutes les régions des Etats-Unis et qui a débuté juste après la crise économique de 2008. La plupart des papys et mamies concernés le font, évidemment, par nécessité : « Le #coût des soins de #santé ayant augmenté très rapidement ces dernières années et les petites #retraites n’ayant pas suivi », rappelle RFI. Les travailleurs #seniors sont plus nombreux à occuper des postes peu physiques, tels que « la gestion et les ventes », explique le Washington Post. Une minorité travaille malgré tout dans la fabrication et la construction.

#leadership

Hot Product Managers vs. Cool Product Managers
▻https://hackernoon.com/hot-product-managers-vs-cool-product-managers-a90e0f6c9ebe?source=rss---

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*7p9q3ZfyXmrJ06Fp4WuneA.jpeg

About Product Management, stakeholders and other demonsPhoto by Devin Avery on UnsplashIn McLuhan’s most relevant book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, he proposes a way to categorise media according to various sensory effects associated with the media.This idea is not hard to extrapolate to other scenarios. Let’s think of #communication as a whole and a concrete example: the communication between Product Managers and their peers.How many times we’ve seen a Product Manager that communicates a feature request with all their details already preconceived, a manager that goes to their designers knowing and already mind-seeing what everything should look like?Many times.Now, how often we’ve seen the other face of the coin? Stakeholders with really poor descriptions of an idea, or with an (...)

#productivity #product-management #leadership #startup