The United Nations agency that fights AIDS has reopened a sexual harassment investigation of a top official who was cleared in an initial probe, saying today that additional allegations have emerged.
UNAIDS declined to specify the new allegations against Luiz Loures, the agency's outgoing deputy executive director for programs. Loures was the subject of a sexual harassment and assault complaint filed in November 2016 from a lower-level employee, Martina Brostrom.
Brostrom alleged he forcibly kissed and grabbed her in a Bangkok hotel elevator in May 2015, claims that Loures has denied. The World Health Organization office that investigated concluded there was insufficient evidence to support the sexual harassment accusation and no evidence of sexual assault.
The Associated Press does not typically identify victims of sexual assault. However, Brostrom spoke to the news media this year after a WHO panel accepted the investigators' recommendation to close the case.
In an email today, Brostrom said she wasn't optimistic a third review would yield a different outcome.
"Given past irregularities in the prior UN investigations, I have no confidence that yet another UN internal investigation will produce an objective and independent outcome," she said.
Critics, including Brostrom, said the review process by WHO's Internal Oversight Services office was badly flawed.
According to a UNAIDS statement emailed today to The Associated Press, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus has asked the UN's internal oversight office to conduct the new investigation.
UNAIDS declined to provide specifics about the new allegations against Loures. Agency spokesman Roman Levchenko said information needed to be withheld "to protect the integrity and confidentiality of the process." WHO also declined further comment.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the United Nations welcomed the move to reopen the investigation "and to suspend the decisions to close the case until the outcome of the broader investigation." The General Assembly has mandated the UN's own Office of Internal Oversight Services "to have operational independence to conduct the investigation," while WHO's Ghebreyesus "has agreed to serve as the decision-maker in this case," Dujarric said.
The original case centered on alleged sexual harassment and assault, and UNAIDS did not refer to sexual assault in its statement about the new investigation.
Today was Loures' last day at UNAIDS, Levchenko said.
In February, UNAIDS spokesman Mahesh Mahalingam told reporters in Geneva that Loures would leave his post by March 31.
Mahalingam said at the time that Loures' departure had nothing to do with Brostrom's allegations, but said the deputy executive-director felt "this is time for him to move on" after 22 years of "long and distinguished" service at UNAIDS.
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