Judgment 4400
131st Session, 2021
International Labour Organization
Extracts: EN,
FR
Full Judgment Text: EN,
FR
Summary: The complainant, a former official of the International Labour Office, impugns the decisions of the Director-General to issue a reprimand against him, to revoke his appointment as a Director, to appoint another person to that post and, finally, to discharge him with notice.
Consideration 31
Extract:
The Tribunal considers that an international organisation is entitled to ask its officials to inform it of any criminal convictions against them and that the duties of good faith and integrity oblige them to reply truthfully to such requests.
Keywords:
criminal sanction; duty of loyalty; duty to inform; staff member's duties;
Judgment keywords
Keywords:
complaint dismissed; criminal sanction; disciplinary measure; private life; termination of employment;
Consideration 19
Extract:
Paragraph 44 of the Standards of Conduct for the International Civil Service, which concerns officials’ “[p]ersonal conduct” and provides that “acts that are generally recognized as offences by national criminal laws will normally also be considered violations of the standards of conduct for the international civil service”, previously states that “[a] conviction by a national court will usually, although not always, be persuasive evidence of the act for which an international civil servant was prosecuted”.
The complainant argues that the principle set out in the second phrase concerning the probative value of convictions by national courts applies, in the words of that phrase, only “generally” and “not always”, and submits that, in the present case, the ILO was in a situation where it should have invoked that exception rather than accepting the offences of which he was accused as proven. However, it is well known that this restriction, placed on the principle in question when the Rules were adopted, was solely intended by the drafters to reserve the case of convictions in States where the courts do not offer the requisite safeguards of independence and procedural fairness. Since there is no doubt that the French legal system fulfils that requirement, the Organization – whose role plainly is not to assess whether a conviction by a national court is justified and which does not have the means to investigate conduct such as that in question in the present case by itself – rightly relied on the judgment of the Tribunal correctionnel and considered that the offences of which he had been accused had been proven.
Keywords:
conduct; criminal sanction; disciplinary procedure; domestic law; evidence;
