Staff threatened witness in sex inquiry, Oxfam says

LONDON — Three Oxfam employees who were the subject of a 2011 inquiry into sexual misconduct in Haiti physically threatened a witness after a manager leaked an investigation report to another member of staff, the charity said Monday.

The threats and intimidation were among several accusations of misconduct made public for the first time with Oxfam’s release of its 2011 report into the conduct of its Haiti staff, including the hiring of prostitutes.

The report states that two of the three people who threatened a coworker were also accused of “sexual exploitation and abuse of employees,” in addition to hiring prostitutes. It does not say whether Oxfam concluded that the claims of mistreatment of colleagues were true, but it says that both of the accused were among four employees “dismissed for gross misconduct,” and that one of them was guilty of “failure to protect staff.”

Oxfam, one of Britain’s largest charities, previously acknowledged that it had fired four people working on earthquake recovery in Haiti, and that three others resigned during or after the investigation, after allegations that they had hired prostitutes on the group’s premises outside Port-auPrince.

Oxfam has also admitted that after forcing out those seven, it did not notify authorities in Haiti, where prostitution is illegal, and that it later hired one of the men as a consultant in Ethiopia.

The revelations have led to investigations by the British government, a halt to government funding of the charity, talk of prosecution by Haitian authorities, the resignation of a top Oxfam executive, and disclosure of claims of sexual misconduct and exploitation by aid workers from multiple groups in many countries.

The president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, told Reuters on Friday that Oxfam was just “the visible part of the iceberg,” and that a much broader investigation into aid organizations was needed.

Penny Mordaunt, the Cabinet minister who leads Britain’s Department for International Development, met last week with Oxfam leaders and threatened to cut off the tens of millions of dollars the group receives annually from the government. “Oxfam has agreed to withdraw from bidding for any new U.K. government funding until DFID is satisfied that they can meet the high standards we expect of our partners,” she said Friday.

The chief executive of Oxfam’s British arm, Mark Goldring, has apologized for the Haiti episode, but he told the Guardian that “the scale and the intensity of the attacks feels out of proportion to the level of culpability.”

The scandal erupted as some Conservative lawmakers were calling for a drastic reduction in government spending on foreign aid.