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How to Silence a Whistleblower
732 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, we speak to Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal, Director of Programmes at the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers, on how to silence and defend whistleblowers across the globe.
Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal is the Director of Programmes at the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and co-director of Climate Whistleblowers. Gabriel is an experienced human rights jurist and campaigner. Among others, Gabriel led an organisation against the deportation of migrant workers’ children and worked on environmental justice issues in the Middle East. Gabriel has an LL.B from the University of Haifa and a Master in African Legal Studies from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Gabriel is an alumnus of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin and of the Our Generation Speaks Fellowship in Boston.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast Theme
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. um In each episode, we'll sit down with leading experts to discuss dangerous activities. From assassinations and airliner shootdowns through to kidnappings and coups, we'll examine each of these threats through the lenses of both the Dangerous Act to seeking to conduct these operations and the agencies around the world seeking to stop them. In the interest of operational security, certain tactical details will be omitted from these discussions.
00:00:34
Speaker
However, the cases and threats which we discuss here are very real.
Guest Introductions and Roles
00:01:01
Speaker
back correct nine one one what the emergency I'm Louis H. Prisant, the founder and co-editor of Encyclopedia Geopolitica. I'm a researcher in the field of intelligence and espionage with a PhD in intelligence studies from Loughborough University. I'm an adjunct professor in intelligence at Science Pro Paris, and in my day job, I provide geopolitical analysis and security-focused intelligence to private sector corporations.
00:01:25
Speaker
I'm Alexander Shokiewicz, a co-editor of Encyclopedia Geopolitica, a multilingual security and intelligence professional with masters in international security from Strasbourg Paris. I've served in both consulting and in-house roles, bridging the gap between analysis and operations, and focusing on threat identification and monitoring, geopolitical intelligence and strategy, and security support to various public and private audiences.
00:01:46
Speaker
Gabrielle Bourdon-Fetel is the director of programs at the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa and co-director of Climate Whistleblowers. Gabrielle is an experienced human rights jurist and campaigner. Among others, Gabrielle led an organization against the deportation of migrant workers' children and worked on environmental justice issues in the Middle East. Gabrielle has an LLB from the University of Haifa and a Master in African Legal Studies from Université Paréon-Patien Sorbonne.
00:02:13
Speaker
Gabrielle is an alumnus of the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin and of the Our Generation Speaks Fellowship in Boston. Gabrielle, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks Alex, thanks Luz, thanks for having me. So Gabrielle, that's a really interesting background. you know What I'm really interested in is how how did you get into a line of work like this?
00:02:34
Speaker
I think I got into it by being lucky like a lot of people I just got the job and I needed the money. And then the question is how I stayed in it for seven or eight years now. I think I grew up in so I grew up in Israel and I was a political activist from when I was 13 or 14. And as you can tell, especially right now, these times, ah Israel and the Middle East is not a place where change is achieved easily.
00:02:56
Speaker
So I was looking for work, human rights work. I trained as a lawyer and I wanted to do do something human rightsy. I think I was looking for a work where I can be effective and I can see really impact and I can see change. And I think working with whistleblowers a couple of months, a couple of years, I was like, wow. We touched into something here. There's real interests, real money, ah real influence, and the I stayed. That's fascinating. So you touched upon
What is a Whistleblower?
00:03:21
Speaker
this a little bit. What is a whistleblower and why would somebody become one?
00:03:26
Speaker
It's a tricky question because the definition varies, but but the main like the mainstream definition would be someone, probably an employee, most likely an employee, who witnessed something, a wrongdoing in his workplace. It doesn't have to be legal, but it can be against public interest and who decides to denounce this wrongdoing. It can be to a journalist, it can be to his boss, it can be to the government.
00:03:47
Speaker
ah It can be ah even him by himself and they do that to stop the wrongdoing. So the main motivation for words to blur would be to stop something and to protect public interest. What are some of the famous cases that we've seen? And you know, I'm i'm thinking of some big cases, especially in the intelligence world that involve government agencies. But what about the wider space and and how prevalent is this in the public sector versus the private sector? Is is there a difference in how it's seen in each world, for example?
00:04:14
Speaker
So let me return the question to you quickly if i tell you what do what do you think about when you think about the whistleblower what do you think about so for me as an intelligent scholar you know i think snowed and i think manning i think people like that and you know i'm i'm really curious do you have a similar person in mind or or is it a much broader definition that you guys work with.
00:04:34
Speaker
So it's funny because these are the names that come back. Assange, Snowden, Manning, whistleblower. And actually, most of these people are not considered whistleblowers because they blow the whistle on defense issues and national security. And legally speaking, this would forbid them. And indeed, most of the people live in exile or are being sued in some ways.
00:04:52
Speaker
But no when we talk about whistleblowers we can talk about snowden but we can also talk about the tiniest issue we can talk about the municipal worker. So many cases of municipal workers local workers land management and then we can talk about corruption we can talk about the environmental whistleblowers so we are lying. As a definition that is the mythology around it the snowden character.
00:05:14
Speaker
But actually there are a lot of journalistic sources and people everyday life that are visible even without knowing and they think that are smaller but not less important. Are there any particular names that come to mind for you right now? or There are a couple of names that we worked with. We can talk about phenomena of whistleblowers, so often whistleblowers come forward together. So in South Africa, for example, we can talk about state capture whistleblowers, so massive private-public corruption.
Whistleblower Case Studies
00:05:39
Speaker
And we had a series of whistleblowers in South Africa that came and denounced this corruption. They're both private and public sector.
00:05:45
Speaker
And they led to the president resigning into a series of investigations. In the U.S. after Trump, we talked about climate whistleblowers. So I call direct an organization called Climate Whistler Blowers. And the first example of climate whistleblowing as such is Trump elected in 2016 and several public officials from the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies coming forward and saying no and denouncing that. So there are a lot of little examples like that come to mind.
00:06:16
Speaker
That's incredibly interesting. You mentioned a little bit some of the legal risks already, some faults getting sued. What sorts of legal of risks do whistleblowers face and in those cases that you you know have followed or worked with? Legally speaking, whistleblower is tricky, right? Because if you speak about the whistleblower, it's someone stealing information, secret information, and revealing it to the public. That's by definition, it sounds, I mean, it cannot be legal. But more and more, whistleblowers are getting protections.
00:06:44
Speaker
However, they really need these protections and a lot of countries still define whistleblowing as something profoundly legal because ah you can be fired. You're often an employee when you're a whistleblower. You can get sued because you breached your contract. You can be under criminal liability because you reveal secret information or and public interest information of the comments. So legal risks are aplenty when you're a whistleblower. What about Illegal risks. you know Do they face the risk of violence, intimidation? What what do those kind of threats look like? and ah Have you ever seen cases of of that?
Risks Faced by Whistleblowers
00:07:17
Speaker
At the platform to protect whistleblowers in Africa, Plath, we protect whistleblowers from across the continent. and In, I would say, 90% of these cases, the law has nothing to do with the case. Even if the whistleblower is doing something illegal according to this country, so in TLC, the risk he will face often will not be legal. They will be physical.
00:07:36
Speaker
ah When you blow the whistle on powerful networks, it doesn't really matter what the law says, because these networks are rather often powerful more powerful than the law. That's true in Europe and it's true in the US, and it's certainly true in in the DLC, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And it's a ah country in which we record many whistleblowers. and We've seen people tortured. We've seen people forced into exile. We've seen people sentenced to death. And very sadly, we see often their are family members and their friends facing the same fate that they do.
00:08:05
Speaker
What are some of the most so surprising actions that you've seen and that you've come across in those trying to silence a whistleblower? Are there any particular stories that come to mind for that?
00:08:16
Speaker
i think I think what's interesting about whistleblowers is they're often unprepared for what is going to happen to them, right? and They just blow the whistle and something happens to them, happens to their lives, and they do not really prepare for it. And this is something that's unfortunate. But they're also often internal to their work, so they're employees of a workplace, and that makes them way more exposed to these actions of reprisals that you're talking about, Alex.
00:08:40
Speaker
I think one of the wildest examples we have was it started with two whistleblowers from Congo, two bankers who worked in the Audi department in a small bank in Congo. And one day in the bank, they saw a famous billionaire, an Israeli billionaire that was sanctioned by the US for corruption. So he was a big mining billionaire that's very gnawing in Congo and a lot of shady deals around him.
00:09:03
Speaker
And the two bankers denounced internally but to the director of the bank what happened. One got kicked out violently and he fled the country. The other blew the whistle internally, then externally to us a couple months after, and then he had to flee as well.
00:09:19
Speaker
And this story is wild because of the variety of tactics that was used to go after them and after us. There was for a while in Kinshasa, after we published a report with with Global Witness, the UK NGO and and Bloomberg and Le Mans, there was a wave of videos. I think they made 30 or 40 videos attacking us and the whistleblowers with news about us. There were fake news all over Congolese media.
00:09:42
Speaker
We had letters from lawyers, UK law firm, non-stop letters, massive allegations against us, against them, stealing, blackmailing attempts, linked in fake profiles, contacting us and the whistleblowers. And I think this story really showed the the extent to which the risk to which the whistleblowers expose themselves. And in this case, even the person who worked with them, exposed themselves.
00:10:06
Speaker
Following this case, there were complaints filed against media, the whistleblowers and us in the DLC in Israel and in France, more than 10 in total. The
Case Study: Jean-Jacques Lumumba
00:10:17
Speaker
whistleblowers got sentenced to death in the DLC for blowing the whistle. We got 11 complaints against us in France. I was indicted four times for this following these complaints.
00:10:28
Speaker
And all of these complaints were, in France and Israel, were removed a couple of weeks before the first earring, which is a classic tactic where you drain your weak and small opponents and then you cancel the proceeding just before it starts.
00:10:41
Speaker
That's fascinating, and I'm i'm really interested in these case studies. you know are there Are there any other case studies that that for you in your work, and you've you've clearly seen a lot of these kind of examples that that stand out to you that you sort of think this is ah a particularly scary or horrifying example of ah ah where someone is trying to do the right thing and is finding themselves targeted as a result?
00:11:01
Speaker
I think there are and are quite a lot of cases ah that are powerful. One of the first whistleblowers we worked with was Jean-Jacques Lumumba. Jean-Jacques Lumumba is a grandson of Patrice Lumumba, who's the leader of the Congolese independence, and Jean-Jacques was ah holding a comfortable position in the bank in Kinshasa.
00:11:19
Speaker
And the bank was owned by the former president's family. And Jean-Jacques saw a growing number of transactions at the bank that were, to put it, simply corrupt and illegal. And he was terribly shocked. And one day he was summoned to the bank's director, who was also the brother of the president. And the director showed him a gun and told him, you should really should think very well about what you're thinking.
00:11:43
Speaker
And Jean-Jacques left the DLC immediately after. He's never been before he's never been to the DLC after, sorry, he left into exile. And he denounced everything. He took documents with him and he denounced it to the press. And even after that, Jean-Jacques sliced, even though he found a job and he's now ah an activist and a public figure.
00:12:03
Speaker
his car was burned a year ago and that was years after the revelation, his computers were stolen. So it's ah it's quite a life of reprisal. It never really ended for him, which is tragic in a way.
00:12:15
Speaker
So obviously, blowing the whistle comes with a lot of dangers. In your experience, is there a common threshold off sort of anything unethical or illegal ah that people are witnessing that would make them blow the whistle at any particular market? So are we talking about you know people experiencing other people putting in grave danger or or harm to their life, or are we talking a specific sort of marker in terms of environmental damage or or is is there sort of a common threshold or is it was it really very different four for every whistleblower that you've you've come across or worked with?
00:12:46
Speaker
No, you know, I often talk to whistleblowers and I think, why the hell did they do that? That's crazy.
Motivations Behind Whistleblowing
00:12:51
Speaker
I would not do that. I don't know if you guys would do it. and Most of my friends would not do it, even if they are super ethical and they are great people. And I think it's a very individual experience. And someone, something happened to someone and they are shaken to their core. There's something about it. And it's extremely super personal. So it's really hard to say.
00:13:10
Speaker
what objective reality made them blow the whistle. There's something that pisses them off about the way they were treated, about what they saw, about what it means for their society, about all of that together that makes that decision. So no circuit formula.
00:13:25
Speaker
So I have a question on the kind of mechanics of blowing the whistle. So when when someone's coming forward to do it, you know is there a most dangerous moment? Is there a moment where the whistleblower is most vulnerable? and And does that change over time? Do they get more at risk or less at risk as attention fades on on the topic? How does that work?
00:13:43
Speaker
Well, again, context dependence, of course, many different contexts and situations. I think what we see over the years is that there are two reasons for going after a whistleblower, right? One is to prevent them from blowing the whistle so they have access to key information. so And the employer would be like, oh, I need to stop that because it's going to hurt me legally, publicly, it will be terrible. And the other reason reason to go after them is revenge.
00:14:10
Speaker
ah revenge and also to show to other employees ah don't do the same thing. And I think there is a short moment there where the employer is aware that the person is going to blow the whistle, but it has it hasn't blown the whistle yet. It's not yet public. So the guardian of Bloomberg are working on the story, but it's not yet public. And there is a short moment there where there's an insane pressure on the whistleblower and people around them to stop them from from publishing the the story.
00:14:38
Speaker
You talked earlier about how you know the legal landscape is different everywhere for whistleblowers. Where are the most dangerous places in your opinion for a whistleblower right now?
00:14:49
Speaker
Well, we work over Africa and there are many places in which whistleblower is a concept and we haven't even seen a whistleblower because the reality is that even the culture of denouncing something that is wrong and powerful is incredibly inaccepted and violent is so widespread that it's terrible. And I can name specific countries, but I think illegal or legal legal is not the question here. The question is the ability and the will to use violence to shut off people who try to denounce something wrong.
00:15:19
Speaker
What about the opposite of that question? And is there somewhere you've seen that's particularly good, that has good protections, good cultures around this, where you would say that you you know it's particularly advanced and where if you had to be a whistleblower, it's probably the best place to be?
00:15:32
Speaker
No, probably not. I mean, I would not use the word best for whistleblowing ever. And I cannot lie to anyone coming to me and saying, this is going to be great. Everybody's going to listen to you. You're going to find a job. ah You're going to make so much money out of it. No, it's not happening. There's no basic place. There are places where culturally it's more understood. And these are places where there are other whistleblowers and they are known as whistleblowers. And then society, the family of the whistleblower, the journalists, all of them understand what the whistleblower is. That will make the condition easier, but not easy.
00:16:02
Speaker
With that in mind, is there some way you would is there a way you would motivate whistleblowers? like it's you know Clearly, it's a societal and for important function here. Is there so something you would say to them, say, you know despite these risks, despite these hardships, you know this is still worth doing because? And and how would you do that?
00:16:22
Speaker
So it's interesting because our organizations, our organizations have worked for Plath in Africa and also climate whistleblowers. We offer protection to whistleblowers and protection as many forms. You can say we're going to find a secret apartment for you. You can say we're going to give you some money for food for the next six months because you lost your job. and can Also, we were going to get a lawyer for you and do a more classic support thing or a therapist. But what we also try to do is work on impact.
00:16:47
Speaker
And this is a bit more rare. And impact means um we're going to take your information. We're going to take the two gigabytes of bank documents that they gave us, and we're going to read them through. We are going to do it. And then we're going to find the app or system that allows us to search these these documents. And then we're going to find the best journalist that's going to investigate it and publish it as soon as possible without putting you in any risk. And then we're going to find the prosecutor. And the prosecutor that is willing to investigate while keeping your anonymity and your well-being.
00:17:16
Speaker
And I think at the end people blow the whistle because they want to change reality. And also are they're going to blow the whistle. And like I said before, they're not going to be protected fully ever. There's always a bit of a risk to an extent. So I think the real thing to motivate whistleblowers is to ensure that they will have impact when they blow the whistle. And of course that's extremely complicated because you cannot guarantee impact ever. And you cannot guarantee that the authorities will listen to you or they will have money to investigate what you want or the journalists won't be scared too to publish.
00:17:49
Speaker
Are there any particular strategies or tactics that you can use to ensure impact? Are there any particular things that are done, you know, to make sure that the journalist is actually going to care and is going to be willing to put themselves in that position to publish that paper or that report or something like that, or making sure that the authorities act? Is there something where, you know, do you need specific contacts within the authorities or is there something else that you can do?
00:18:16
Speaker
Tricky question, and because we do not control what happens once the information is out. and I think many ah much of this answer is ah public campaigning answer is how to vulgarize information, how to make it credible, how to make it accessible to the public.
00:18:32
Speaker
Part of it is also chewing the information. I'm trying to think from French, but it's to make the information as accessible to investigators, to prosecutors, to journalists. So they won't have to work a lot because they don't have resources and they don't have time to do it. And you, by working with the whistleblower, you have access to ah evidence and his testimony and his explanations and his expertise that are so valuable. So by working with them, it allows you to make the information a bit easier for them.
00:18:58
Speaker
And I think the last thing is also sometimes we should always public and sometimes it's not.
Emerging Whistleblowing Trends
00:19:03
Speaker
When he is public and when he is willing to tell his story, I think it's extremely interesting for them to go public and show their face, show their narrative. People listen when they see someone talking about what they witnessed way more than just an article about embezzlement in a random newspaper.
00:19:20
Speaker
How's whistle-blowing changing? You talked about climate whistle-blowing earlier. I mean, we've known each other for quite a bit of time at this point. And I do think that climate whistle-blowing was not created that long ago, actually. Are there any other trends in the whistle-blowing space that you're seeing, sort of new things emerging after that?
00:19:38
Speaker
whistleblower is very trendy at the moment in the past 15 years. So there's a way more people in the space, way more laws, way more authorities interested in it. And for sure, yeah, there are a couple of trends. I think, uh, I think governments, a lot of them understand the value of whistleblowing, uh, for the rule of the law. But if I'm more cynical also for recovering public funds and, uh, getting information without doing a crazy and expensive investigation. So there's a lot of interest from authorities around around whistleblowing.
00:20:06
Speaker
And also we see you know the word today you would talk about massive corporations doing massive harm so climate is one example we have this. Insanely horrible things happening and we have been multinationals doing all of that tech is the same right we see its the gaffam going forward eating whatever they want.
00:20:23
Speaker
hurting our public life, controlling our data, horror shows. And I think in these realms, we mentioned climate, which is indeed a small organization. There is incredible quality and value for in insiders, right? Because it's really hard to investigate the GAFM. But one person with access to one server and one computer, they can really do a lot. And you've got the Facebook whistleblower, you've got the Uber whistleblower now. So you've got a lot of that going on as well.
00:20:49
Speaker
We're talking to Gabrielle Bourdon-Fatal about the risks of whistleblowers, and after the break we'll talk about protecting whistleblowers.
00:21:04
Speaker
You have been listening to How to Get on a Watchlist, the podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. If you like this show, don't forget to check out our other content at Encyclopedia Geopolitica, which you can find at howtogettontowatchlist.com, where you can find our analysis on various geopolitical issues, as well as reading lists covering topics like those discussed in the podcast. Please also consider subscribing to the podcast on your streaming platform of choice, giving us a rating, and joining our Patreon.
00:21:47
Speaker
Before the break, we talked about the risks to whistleblowers. Let's now talk about protecting them. Is there a particular life cycle to protecting a whistleblower sort of from the moment that they witness what makes them blow the whistle through the different stages of helping them then?
Protecting Whistleblowers
00:22:02
Speaker
ah You did mention communication support at one point during our conversation here. Is there a a very classic life cycle sort of from the moment that they you know realize they're seeing something and then they come for help? And how do you manage these different stages?
00:22:17
Speaker
There's no one life cycle, but definitely different phases. And sometimes it happens, different orders for different people, but we can see really things that come back and are all similar. And I think one of the things we do after we vet the visual blur and we understand they are real and for real and they really mean it is try to really explain the risk that they're going to expose themselves to. Because very often people don't realize.
00:22:39
Speaker
You have someone coming to you and saying, hey, I work in this company. I've seen a weapon sale. I want to blow the whistle on it. But they don't realize that it means they'll have to wait maybe a year and a half. The family is going to be bad on them. They will have no money. Psychologically, they will be completely drained. And so I think a really important phase is try to explain this to them without scaring them and giving them the time to make a decision that is as honest and real as possible.
00:23:08
Speaker
Following that, there is always a long process of of waiting because between the moment where you blow the whistle and the moment where you actually see something happening. ah Well, often you see nothing happening, but there is a long period of waiting where people have to wait and they think something is going to happen. And then they just sit at home and we work with them and then they don't talk to us. for We don't talk to them for four weeks because we have nothing to tell them at the moment.
00:23:31
Speaker
I think that's extremely, extremely important. And I think most of all, and like I said before, it's a very lonely moment and often whistleblowers are misunderstood by everyone around them because screwing up your life, screwing up your family, losing all your money, not a lot of people understand why you would do that.
00:23:50
Speaker
So I think there is periods of being scared just before you reveal the information and period of depression and sadness after you reveal and where you see nothing is happening that are common. Maybe they're not justified always, but they are very common.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds like a very anxiety-driving situation. you You did mention you provide psychological support for these types of situations as well and and and sort of support these people through that as they go through that, yeah, potential phases of, you know, depression, depression anxiety, and all of that. Is that correct?
00:24:25
Speaker
We try to do it more and more. We try to do it also because you understand that we need a professional to do it, otherwise we'll have to do it. we We are not well-placed to do so. But we also did it because we saw whistleblowers. We saw a French whistleblower and then a Malian whistleblower and a South African whistleblower and we saw all of them Reacting in a certain way reacting in a certain manner showing the same patterns and this is it it was extremely interesting for us because it showed that even though the cultural backgrounds are. The most different you can imagine humans in these situations react in the same way so yeah we we try to provide them now with professional support from the start. Yeah would you say that there is.
00:25:05
Speaker
In terms of psychological sort of manifestations of that, would you say that there is increasingly a willingness to talk about these things among whistleblowers? And that's why you're also sort of implementing that support? Or is it just that you're starting to see patterns? You mentioned cultural differences, right? There's obviously different contexts in which people will be more or less willing to speak about psychological difficulties. So I'm just thinking whether that's an angle there.
00:25:29
Speaker
There definitely is more willingness to understand and to break the taboo around this. And I think this this will also make it easier for other whistleblowers to step forward. in In South Africa, our organization PLAF is part of a coalition, a whistleblower support coalition. And one of the priorities of the coalition is to provide social social support to whistleblowers.
00:25:49
Speaker
listening to this and listening to the the very daunting journey a a whistleblower has ahead of them. you know the The question that comes out to me is, if if if I was contemplating becoming a whistleblower, what are the best things I could do before taking action to protect myself? As an as an individual who doesn't have the resources or the knowledge of of how how this works, what are the things I should do before I act to keep myself safe?
00:26:13
Speaker
I think maybe the most important is not to do so by yourselves. And there are so many aspects of whistleblowing. If you download something from the server of your company, for example, that seems innocuous, it's meaningless, but actually you're living a digital trace and you can get screwed in court two years after for that. If you do something and you haven't talked to your spouse before, and then one day you get fired and you have to explain to your spouse why it happened.
00:26:40
Speaker
If you do so and you think the authorities are gonna arrest your boss the day after, they will probably not. So it doesn't mean you don't have to do it, but I think it means you have to talk to someone who knows how it works. And it can be a lawyer, it can be a journalist, it can be an organization like us, but it's extremely important to get a full picture before you choose to do what what you'll do.
00:27:01
Speaker
And how do you make sure that you can protect your evidence? i mean How do you and ensure you know things like veracity of evidence? Do these whistleblowers have to be coached to ensure that they collect admissible evidence ahead of time? like how does How does that work?
00:27:16
Speaker
Thanks God not because this will be really hard for them. and No, the the condition that there is is that they have a credible reason to believe. This is the accepted term today, a credible reason to believe that they denounce wrongdoing. And in that sense, they don't have to prove anything in particular. I mean, they don't have to bring a certain amount of documents, etc, etc. So they have You know, they have to to think that there is saw something wrong and then they have to go and denounce it and that's fine. But then the real question is how do you get and enough information out that will really change the world, right? And there it's it's way trickier. You have to make a real effort to bring the right evidence and again, you don't have a legal mind. So if Alex you were to blow the whistle tomorrow, I'm not sure you would know what exact documents you'll need to win in court or exact documents you need.
00:28:04
Speaker
to go to media, probably not. This is very tricky. So how do you overcome this and how do whistleblowers find where to turn? Where can they even find the resources to protect them? I mean, how do they come across organizations like yours or how do they find a capable lawyer? How do they, you know, what's out there?
00:28:21
Speaker
often nothing. But in many cases, because we should learn is more widespread and understood. Now, I think a lot of people work will be the first people to meet a whistleblower, and they know they need to refer them to someone else who knows how to work with them, who knows how to support them.
Building Support Networks
00:28:38
Speaker
And more and more, we get media, we get whistleblowers who said, I want to this media and the media said, Whoa, too many problems. I want your information, but I don't want your problems.
00:28:47
Speaker
You need someone to support you. You can go to this organization or Y organization. And it even happened with an authority once, an authority was like, this whistleblower case is so complex that an NGO is needed to protect them. So I think the real strategy we're trying to apply here is talk to as many lawyers as possible, trade unions, journalists, media, NGOs, civil society, all of this is people who might encounter a whistleblower. And if they have a minimum knowledge about how to work with them at first, it's it's so important for from the beginnings of the process.
00:29:23
Speaker
And in terms of the percentage of people that come to you directly versus those who are referred, how does that compare? Would you say that more people contact you directly because they so they find out about your organization or one of your organizations? Or do you feel like it's more the case that, you know, somebody goes to, as you mentioned, right, to to the media and then the media is kind of like, no, please go and talk to these to these other folks. I'd like to pretend like we have clear statistics about who is approaching us and how we got there. We absolutely don't have this.
00:29:52
Speaker
But, but I think I'd say half, half in most cases. So we had people who were like secret proton mail address got referred by the guardian. But then we also had people who were send us a message with PDFs on Facebook and these two kept happening.
00:30:08
Speaker
How would a whistleblower verify that the people that they're speaking to be journalists, activists, an organization, that they're legitimate? Is there a risk? Is this something is this a trend that you're seeing of bad actors sort of posing as these types of people to undermine whistleblowers instead of laying traps? Is this something that's that's happening or marginal?
00:30:32
Speaker
I would say the risk is not a trap in most cases. The risk is negligence. We had a whistleblower blew the whistle on Chinese networks without going too much details that were doing very bad things to the environment. And he went to a journalist, quite a known journalist actually, and he blew the whistle and he sent a couple of materials. And the journalist just published everything online a couple of weeks after. And for them, it was clear. We got the source, we got information, it's quality information. They want to publish it. Let's publish. Except when they did that.
00:31:02
Speaker
they risked the life of the whistleblower because it was obvious that the videos and the pictures came from him. So the real problem here is people often don't understand the risk involved and can act not in accordance with it. Listening to your talk here, it's not just these legal risks. you know There's a lot about them physical risks. You've talked about violence, torture, your murder, and so on.
00:31:24
Speaker
How does physical protection for whistleblowers work? do Do they get personal protection? Do they get bodyguards? you know what What does that look like? If you have a whistleblower in your custody who's you know in extreme physical danger, what what sort of steps do you take to keep them safe?
00:31:38
Speaker
So it's quite interesting because, you know, in ah European laws, there's no provisions for protecting physically with the laws. So there's not like, oh, we're going to get a shelter for you because it's, I mean, there are political threats, but it's not a massive issue. And then in Africa, where you have laws, most of these laws were copy pasted from European laws and are completely misadapted. when When you have a law in a place where someone needs a shelter, you need an article that will say resources will be collected for blah, blah, blah. And you also need an article that says the police or the whistleblower authority will provide shelters for these whistleblowers. That's almost not the case. We saw one case in Africa where the authorities actually provided a shelter to a whistleblower as a whistleblower. And then the question is, what do you do to protect them? And that's extremely tricky because you need to protect not only them, but also their family. And then you you start encountering a lot of logistical issues.
00:32:27
Speaker
You need passports for them and for your kids. Good luck with that. These are for the EU, Jesus Christ, very hot. So there are there are ways around it and we try to work with them. We try to work with the human rights defenders organizations to try to at least give them a shelter in another city in the same country.
00:32:47
Speaker
ah Recently, we co-created support shelter in Ghana with Anas or Emiya Anas, who's a great Ghanaian journalist. And these local shelters with less visa restrictions and less funds for traveling are a bit easier.
Logistical and Legal Challenges
00:33:01
Speaker
But it remains a problem because a tiny NGO can do so much in supporting a family on the run.
00:33:08
Speaker
Talk about how some of these laws you know will say things like, oh, the police have to protect you and so on. What happens when the police or the government are the perpetrators? How how does that work? it's It's very tricky because where where the state is corrupt, to its core, at least not corrupt, but so weak that the powerful network can do whatever they want with the authorities or can get access to information. It's very tricky. And you would probably need at least some amount of independent authorities or an independent and judicial system that will allow some kind of protection. Otherwise, you're back to square one, which is
00:33:44
Speaker
NGOs, defenders, human rights defenders, maybe some nice authority on the side, but yeah some external interventions, for example. So we often go to embassies, we go to the UN n and we try to ask them to put pressure on local governments so they would leave the whistleblower alone. And this might not be enough for for them to be taken and seriously, but it's enough for the whistleblower to stay alive.
00:34:07
Speaker
We talked a lot about sort of the legal side of things and legal protections earlier. Have there been any any major shifts in the protections that are granted over the past years? I'm thinking of any particular precedent cases that would make things easier or more difficult and in certain jurisdictions for for whistleblowers.
00:34:26
Speaker
There has been actually insane shifts on legal protections in the past 10 years. So maybe one of the most positive, the only positive points of this conversation. um But in the past 10, 20 years, there's been new laws all over the place. In Africa as well, we see way more interest from authorities. There has been an EU directive on whistleblower. So all EU members are on our forced to pass a law. I think all of them have at this point, a law to protect whistleblowers. And these laws are Not draft from 40 years ago, there are laws that were shaped with civil societies in many cases, and they are based on real concrete experiences of protection of reprisals of legal risk. So there is a lot of happening in terms of legal protections. What's driving this shift? is Is there something that is causing governments to pay more attention to this?
00:35:19
Speaker
That's a tricky question, actually, because i'm I can only guess here, right? I think there are a couple of different incentives for the shift. The first is, I think there's a growing public discourse around whistleblowing. You mentioned Snowden. I think Snowden is the example that comes to mind, but he's really an example of a whistleblower that lets a lot of people to blow the whistle themselves or to understand what whistleblowing is.
00:35:42
Speaker
And from there, I think you can see waves of whistleblowers. We think of whistleblowers as a very individual action, but actually people do so because they see others and they are inspired. So one whistleblower leads to other. Where the whistleblower in DRC, Jean-Jacques Lumumba, is the first known whistleblower, known as a whistleblower in DRC. And after that, we saw a dozen others coming forward, and almost all of them said, we saw Jean-Jacques. And we're like, wow.
00:36:07
Speaker
we didn't realize we could actually do it. And I think that's also what's bringing us some some change forward. And I think the other reason is, whistleblowing is, it in today's world, it's an incredibly effective way of changing society, right? So we talk about climate whistleblowers. When you talk about climate change, changing realities really necessary route right now and it's really hard to get. Political action is not working, demonstrations are not working, changing your own habits is not working. I'm i'm being a bit pessimistic here, but it's not working enough anyway. And whistleblowing, one person with access to a company's server, companies frauding their emissions, who is lying the government about how they intend to get to net zero, all of this can be super powerful considering other ways of actions.
00:36:53
Speaker
So let's zoom out to the international stage a little bit. Are there any international structures there to protect whistleblowers? you know is Is there a UN whistleblower agency? Does that exist? The answer to the first question is is no. and There are no international structures to protect whistleblowers. There are international NGOs. There are international bodies who try to care about whistleblowers. A lot of them had problems doing so in the past, like the UN.
00:37:17
Speaker
But we can see the ILO and regional bodies and regional cults, more and more on conventions talking about whistle blowing, but we don't have a proper body with resources to do
Career Challenges Post-Whistleblowing
00:37:25
Speaker
the work. And the second question, the answer is absolutely yes, because whistle blowers are often blowing the whistle on international crimes, all right? So Amadou Taurier, whistle blower from Mali blew the whistle on wood. There was cuts in Burkina Faso, sorry, cuts in Burkina Faso in Mali and Senegal, and there was sheep through Senegal, and most of it landed in China.
00:37:47
Speaker
And whistleblower from South Africa blow the whistle on KPMG implication in local corruption. And whistleblower from DRC blow the whistle on Israeli businessmen and suspected terrorism money and laundering networks using Spanish-French correspondent banking system to get money into the Czech Republic. So all of this is very international.
00:38:11
Speaker
And the wish of law is vital in bringing this information forward because the Czech authority or the Spanish authorities will have a real hard time getting this information. But for now, in terms of cooperation and collaboration around this, there is still some work to do. If you're someone who has revealed something that's rather unpleasant about you know an organization or a business that they used to be part of, I imagine it's not exactly easy to pick up your career where you left off.
00:38:37
Speaker
It's probably one of the reasons why a lot of people remain silent on unethical or illegal practices that they observe, right, and out of fear of repercussions, and and in particular, their livelihood as well. So what I'm thinking about here is how long can you actually protect a whistleblower, or how long can they receive, you know, financial support? Because I presume that somebody who reveals something, you know, and I don't know, there mid-30s, mid-40s, whatever, still has ah quite a few years to to live. and they have to you know have Do they have to be protected for the rest of their life? and And how do you even get these financial resources to them to achieve that? That's very tricky. yeah We talked before about psychosocial support, right? So there's a psychostat about the social side. How do you get back to your life after and how do you get a job?
00:39:19
Speaker
And in most cases, public whistle blows, right? Not anonymous ones or secret ones because these ones might keep working even in the same place as they did before. But the the public ones will find themselves suddenly very probably out of a job, actually almost ever out of a job because they will get fired for blowing the whistle or they will leave because it's too unpleasant for them. And then it's really hard to get a job in the same space that you left before.
00:39:45
Speaker
And no, the answer is you cannot keep protecting them forever. And that's a real tricky question for us as well, right? Because when does it end? When does the period of whistleblowing end? How do we define it? It's really hard to do, and it probably is, but we have to do it for financial reasons. And we also have to do it because these people have to get back to their lives at some point. so And then the answers vary. Some people become activists. Some people manage to remain in the old workplaces because they find employers are like, oh, a wishable is actually a very decent person, an ethical person. I want this person to work for me. This is unfortunately, in most cases is not that. Most cases is like, whoa, this is a troublemaker, nah, not employing the job. And a lot of them, yeah, they have to change jobs or change fields, like you said, in the 30s or 40s. And that is very tricky to do and complicated.
00:40:30
Speaker
and I want to get back to something that you mentioned there about, you know, some whistleblowers remaining anonymous. How successful can you actually be if you're trying to bring about real change, if things are not necessarily exposed to the level that would expose the person? Is there a way of, you know, doing that and and remaining anonymous actually, and having sort of that, you know, snowball-ish effect?
00:40:55
Speaker
So in most cases, you know, we asked the whistleblower, the whistleblower comes to us and says, I want to remain anonymous. And we say, OK, if you're your employer and you have to list and the story comes out tomorrow in the in the paper and you have to list suspects of leaking this information.
00:41:08
Speaker
ah How high will you be on the list? And in most cases, they are very high on the list and most cases are number one or two on the list. So that means that keeping anonymous is very complicated, but it's really not impossible. you know First, because in some cases the person is smart and discreet enough or lucky enough and so no one manages to get them, or because the employer is ah too lazy or doesn't have proof to go hunt them down after the low whistle or reveal their identity. That is also possible.
00:41:36
Speaker
And in that case, if you go to our website, and climate whistleblowers website, you will see two stories, but you won't see a whistleblower in them even mentioned. This information came from somewhere. I'm not going to say where, maybe it was dropped on our website, maybe someone gave it to us. But de facto, this is something that came out without a person being published at the end of it.
00:41:57
Speaker
there Are there any cases of of groups of whistleblowers coming forward together? you know it's When I think of whistleblowers, I think of individuals, but are there are there times where we've seen you know a whole group of people coming forward at once?
00:42:08
Speaker
Yes, but often it's it's a bit messy because whistle blowing is messy. It's someone who does it by themselves and they're a bit scared so they don't want to talk to any of their colleagues. There's no protections for them. So it's often not organized, but very often we see someone blowing the whistle and then we saw three other people from the same employer was like, I'm going to do the same thing actually for for various reasons. But like we said before, we see blowing is inspiring. So people often do it together.
00:42:35
Speaker
In the U.S. as well, you know, when the Trump administration arrived into power in 2016 and all the climate stuff happened, anti-climate stuff, I should say, you saw American officials all over the place stepping forward and and denouncing. It wasn't together together, they were not sending the email together, but it was one after the other and surely inspired one by another. More of a domino effect in that case.
00:42:59
Speaker
what is the Let me rephrase this. If there was one thing that you could say to potential whistle blowers out there, what's the most important thing that you would want them to know? How to summarize in one thing? It can be several. That's fine too. Yeah. I think it's the same recommendation that I told ah gave Luis before about his whistling is be prepared. Be as prepared as possible. It's not the end of the world if you don't do it. If you do it, do what you need.
00:43:28
Speaker
So one question we always like to ask our guests here is, you know, this is ah a dangerous topic. It's a very heavy topic. What keeps someone like you up at night? What is, what is the nightmare scenario in in the world of whistleblowing?
00:43:41
Speaker
I think there's no perfect protection, especially in some of the cases I mentioned. This is really scary stuff. I think i mean, I got sued, right? But that's that's me in France, in Paris. like my My phone might get hacked. But but for other people, it might mean it might mean death. And we can be as smart and prepared as possible. We are still a small NGO, and risk you both work on risk in different levels. Risk is often an assumption of risk.
00:44:06
Speaker
And many it often, many times, we get surprised. We think, oh, this person won't sue anyone. This company is not a suing company. Or this is not a dangerous network. Nothing violent will happen. But then we get surprised because something extremely violent happens. And I think the nightmare scenario is when we missed that spot. And surely, statistically, we work with people all over the place. Less pleasant things will happen. And on that day, it will be also our fault, our responsibility. I think this is something that we'll carry for a long time if it if it happens.
00:44:36
Speaker
ah That's powerful stuff. Well, Gabrielle, thank you very much for joining us. You're very welcome. You've been listening to Gabrielle Bourdon-Patel talking about how to silence a whistleblower. Our producer for the show was Edwin Tran. To all our listeners and Patreon supporters, thank you so much for listening and supporting how to get on a watch list.
00:44:55
Speaker
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