A Geneva-based global health foundation in turmoil. Where were regulators?    

Geneva hosts some 1,350 foundations, many of which receive public funding from Switzerland and other countries.   SWI swissinfo.ch / Helen James

Despite repeated warnings from staff and donors, Swiss regulators failed to avert a crisis that upended operations and strained the finances of a prominent Geneva-based diagnostics non-profit.

In the 20 years since its founding, the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) has become an influential player in the global health landscape. FIND develops and supports diagnostic tools for conditions such as HIV, malaria, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases. Its diagnostic tools have been used by millions worldwide – primarily in low-income countries. 

FIND is a partner of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and helped coordinate the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic.  

The non-profit’s rise in global health was supported by a steady stream of funding from major international donors. In 2023, its backers included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ($6.2 million; about CHF5.57 million at the time), Japan ($1.3 million), the United Kingdom’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office  ($10,6 million) and the United Kingdom’s Department of Health and Social Care (1.8 million), the Netherlands ($2 million), the international Unitaid initiative ($8.5 million), and the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), which donated about $1 million that same year, according to the FIND 2023 financial report. 

In total it received $59.8 million in donations in 2023 – making it an important player in the Swiss foundations landscape. FIND’s 2024 financial statement is not available to date.

Today, the aforementioned donors, as well as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI) and the UK charity LifeArc, have decided to suspend their payments, freeze them, or wind down their projects with the foundation, according to sources and documents provided by the organisation. FIND has allegedly lost about a third of its workforce since January 2024 due to layoffs, non-renewals of contracts and resignations and many of its programmes have stopped. 

Hundreds of pages of documents viewed by Swissinfo, as well as interviews with former and current staff, point to a management crisis which led to serious financial consequences. 

In mid-August 2024, one of FIND’s former board member alerted the Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (FSAF), the governing body of Swiss-registered foundations, about the situation. In September, three other board members raised the alarm. Employees and donors had already warned the authority as early as June 2024 in writing.

More than a year later, no decisive measures have been taken by the FSAF to stop the crisis. This raises the question of the control mechanisms in place to oversee Geneva’s more than 1,350 foundations, many of which receive public funding from Switzerland and other countries. 

In November 2024, the SDC, operating under the Swiss ministry of foreign affairs and a former contributor to FIND, asked accounting firm PwC to carry out an independent audit on the foundation’s governance. 

The audit was supported by donors, who had frozen their grants, to investigate alleged mismanagement at FIND. They said they would align with its findings.

More than four months past its expected release date, the report has been finalised, but not published. The delay has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest within the SDC and prompted questions about why the findings have yet to be made public.

Read more on how Geneva foundations are monitored in part 1 of our investigation.

A crisis in the making 

During the pandemic, FIND grew significantly, as did many global health organisations. 

In 2020, financial statements show the foundation received $139 million in grants, which surged to $208.4 million in 2021 at the peak of the Covid-19 crisis. As the pandemic began to subside, funding declined to $95.9 million in 2022. By 2023, FIND had returned to its pre-Covid-19 funding levels, securing $59.8 million in donations for its programmes – comparable to the $62.9 million it received in 2019.

Although funding had decreased for external reasons, financial statements show the organisation started 2024 in a healthy financial situation. This changed at the end of the year according to sources and documents Swissinfo consulted. FIND has not filed its 2024 results and did not provide total grants for 2024 when asked by Swissinfo.

Internal documents shared by FIND with Swissinfo – though not for direct quotation – outline two possible funding scenarios for 2025, depending on whether donor support recovers. In the scenario where the suspension of grants by donors is lifted, FIND’s grant income is expected to be the lowest since 2017.

In the scenario where grant suspensions are not lifted, grant income is expected to be the lowest since the foundation’s first publicly available financial statements in 2016, and FIND is expected to have a cash shortfall. 

Both scenarios estimate the foundation will be in deficit in 2025.

“The delay in accessing frozen funds for fiscal year 2025 is now placing a significant pressure on our reserves, which were originally intended to be safeguarded for emergencies,” FIND wrote in an email in response to Swissinfo’s questions.

The organisation, which had 306 employees in January 2024, has since seen its workforce shrink by about a hundred. By the end of July this year, staff numbers had fallen to 215, below pre-pandemic levels. In comparison, FIND employed 245 people in January 2020.

Sources, both current and former employees, mainly attribute the organisation’s decline to a single individual. They are referred to here as A.C, a pseudonym used in accordance with Swiss privacy laws for this investigation.

A.C arrived at the board of FIND with the promise of bringing new funds to an organisation suffering from the end of its Covid-19 grants. Recalibrating activity and raising funds was common for organisations that had benefited from Covid-19 subsidies. 

A.C replaced the previous board chair who had been at this position for 10 years. 

Described as “charismatic” by sources, A.C who “likes to be in the spotlight”, was first seen as a real asset for the foundation by the former executive team. They brought with them a new, more hands-on approach to management. 

Since then, their alleged mismanagement of the organisation has been linked to the departure of many employees in management positions and the loss of critical donor funding, sources said

FIND recognised the foundation had gone through a “crisis” but insists it is now “financially sustainable”. In an email to Swissinfo, it said the foundation’s chair had inherited “a challenging and conflict-laden situation” and that they were in no way responsible for a crisis that was fueled by “a small number of agitators”.

The foundation told Swissinfo it needed to be reformed and downsized after growing significantly to address the Covid-19 pandemic. It accuses disgruntled employees of conspiring against FIND, leading donors to suspend their payments.  Restructuring including the need to reduce the leadership team had begun before A.C arrived, according to the foundation.

Sources and internal documents seen by Swissinfo indicate the executive team clashed with the chair about a year after their appointment on a number of issues including human resources, spending and atmosphere at work. 

FIND denies the foundation was or is currently in financial difficulty. It says the organisation has “survived the crisis” and “settled into a new leadership team”. 

Swissinfo spoke to eight current and former employees of FIND, as well as a donor and several legal experts. We had access to numerous emails, letters of complaint from staff and donors, invoices and official documents from FIND’s governance. 

Sources all spoke to us on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution. They all described A.C’s abuse of power, as well as the climate of fear they instilled in the organisation. Some also mentioned witnessing alleged abuse of funds.

Read more on how Geneva foundations are monitored in part 2 of our investigation.

Travel fees, layoffs and threats

One main cause of contention was the chair’s annual travel allocations which were CHF433 000 ($357,000) per year, according to a document dated May 2024. This is allegedly more than five times higher than all of the previous board’s yearly travel budget.

The statutes of the organisation allow for “reasonable compensation” to be granted to board members for services rendered to the foundation. Sources we spoke to question whether the amounts requested by A.C for their travels qualify as reasonable and whether these trips and stays really served to advance FIND’s mandate. 

FIND’s management explained that the chair was required to travel to meet potential new donors after the end of Covid-19 grants. But some sources claimed certain trips were neither approved in advance nor accompanied by justification as would be required to ensure the chair is travelling for the benefit of FIND’s mission.

 “We guarantee the chair’s trips were all validated by the management team and approved by the board,” FIND’s current CEO Ifedayo Adetifa said.  

According to several sources, staff who raised questions about travel expenses and other mismanagement were laid off. FIND’s representatives deny any layoffs for questioning travel expenses. 

At the end of May 2024, FIND’s external person of trust, charged with processing anonymous complaints from employees, flagged that they had received 40 complaints in the past weeks, against an average of five per year over the previous three years.

Documents seen by Swissinfo show that most members of FIND’s leadership team were either dismissed, their contracts were not renewed, or they resigned, allegedly because of what sources said was a “toxic work atmosphere.” Many other employees followed. 

In a letter to the board in May 2024, FIND’s former executive team wrote: “With several departures from the senior leadership team over the past year (Executive Team has lost six people, and Leadership team five of their team members over the past seven months) the stability and credibility of FIND are being questioned both internally and externally. This will undoubtedly have a lasting impact on the organisation’s ability to retain and attract talent, partners and funding.”

Many departing employees were required to sign confidentiality clauses in their termination letters, which is common HR practice. As a result, some of them refused to speak to Swissinfo, fearing legal repercussions.

In a document from July 23, seen by Swissinfo, the board and executive team are forbidden from speaking to “any third party about FIND’s governance issues”. These documents contributed to a “climate of terror”, according to a source close to the organisation.

“It was clear we were not allowed to mention the situation to anyone, or we would face legal action”, said the source. During a staff meeting on September 11, 2024, according to minutes reviewed by Swissinfo, FIND’s current CEO stated that the chair intended to sue a current staff member.

FIND claims that the termination agreements followed standard HR practices. It says layoffs were part of restructuring as the foundation had to adapt to reduced activity post-Covid 19. 

About ten former staff members are now thought to be involved in legal proceedings against their former employer, in some cases for dismissal without just cause. 

FIND is allegedly seeking millions in damages on the grounds that they spoke to donors to raise concerns about mismanagement, possibly triggering the suspension of funding, says a source. FIND’s current representatives say they are not plaintiffs in any legal cases against former employees. 

The eight current and former employees Swissinfo spoke to for this article all mentioned being scared and said that were they to be identified, their reputations, jobs, careers and, for some – with conditional residency permits – even their future in the country could be at stake.  

Email access

Sources told Swissinfo of further mismanagement and abuse of power, including alleged access to personal emails and aggressive threats and accusations of racism or misogyny against board and staff members.

With the help of FIND’s legal firm – referred to here under the pseudonym Stern & Delacroix to comply with Swiss media law – A.C allegedly accessed staff email. According to FIND, this was done as part of an internal audit on suspicion of misconduct. FIND says all requests are compliant with the law. 

In January 2025, the chair published on their blog screenshots of private messages in which a former collaborator speaks about them to a relative. The blog post aimed to defame the former collaborator’s character in response to insulting comments they made against the chair.  FIND management refused to comment on how the chair had access to these emails.

FIND’s said no legal threats were issued or pursued by the Board Chair.

Regulatory inaction and systemic failure

When foundations like FIND are mismanaged, it’s the role of the FSAF to intervene. The monitoring body ensures that these organisations are properly administered, according to the rules mentioned in their bylaws. Among its various regulatory powers, the FSAF can order inspections of financial records, issue formal warnings, dismiss board members, revoke decision-making authority, or appoint a custodian. However, a 2022 audit by the Swiss Federal Audit Office revealed that the FSAF had not exercised any of these sanctions in the four years leading up to the audit.

FSAF conducts regular reviews of foundations’ documentation. Unless they are alerted, they rarely question how a foundation is managed beyond its official declarations.

In July 2024, a partner risk assessment commissioned by the SDC in February 2024 highlighted “significant issues” with FIND’s governance. The auditor claims that they were unable to meet with the chair or members of the board. FIND management said board members were not asked to be interviewed. 

On July 11 2024, following multiple alerts by donors and employees, the FSAF sent a letter to FIND’s board asking for explanations regarding the increase in board spending, high turnover of staff, workplace atmosphere, and governance issues. 

In August, four board members – including one who had served for seven years – resigned from the board. In a letter to the FSAF in September titled “Necessity of urgent action to ensure FIND’s survival”, they explain that they were unable to stop “the collapse of FIND” due to the chair’s toxic management. They urged the surveillance authority to immediately appoint a commissioner to take over the activities of the board and prevent “FIND’s imminent collapse”.  

No immediate action was taken by the FSAF. 

When contacted by Swissinfo, the FSAF confirmed it had the power to “suspend or revoke one or more members of the foundation board”. However, they added: “The authority is required to apply the principle of proportionality in all its actions, in particular when defining the intensity of its intervention. If an intervention is necessary, the means used must be as ‘non-incisive’ as possible.” 

In November 2024, the SDC launched an audit of the organisation’s governance. Many of the other donors who had suspended their payments supported the audit, helped design its terms of reference and agreed to align with its results. 

At the end of the same month, the FSAF named a commissioner at the board of FIND, several months after the former board members asked for urgent action. The commissioner’s role is to “support and collaborate with the members of the board in the context of a reorganisation of the foundation”. Although the commissioner can “take all necessary measures to safeguard the interests of the foundation”, eight months after his nomination the FSAF confirmed the commissioner has not taken measures yet in regard to FIND.

FIND filed two reports to the FSAF in February of this year in which they detailed the reasons for the management crisis.  

When asked what would be their next step in the investigation of FIND, the FSAF didn’t comment.

Even after the appointment of an FSAF commissioner, the chair continued to consult employees’ and collaborators’ emails, as shown by the January publication on their blog of private exchanges.

As of the end of April of this year, FIND’s staff continued to leave the organisation, according to several sources close to the foundation. The chair was reappointed to sit at the head of the board. She maintains her decision powers

Contested report

Seven donors who temporarily suspended their payments to FIND are allegedly waiting for the results of the SDC’s audit before finalising their funding decisions.

FIND was supposed to receive an initial report 30 working days after the beginning of the review, which began mid-November. The foundation said they have never received this preliminary report. 

According to sources, the report is ready but its publication is delayed for “an unknown reason”. The SDC said they were going through a “procedure” and declined to provide more explanation. 

The report was sent in a confidential setting to FIND on June 17. FIND confirmed they had received the report but did not comment on its findings. 

In a letter seen by Swissinfo to donors and partners dated August 22, FIND confirms it has received the report and asks the SDC to amend it as it “contains numerous errors and inaccuracies”. 

In its letter FIND says the SDC has not yet responded to its request.

Donors have not received the report at time of publication.  

The FSAF did not comment on whether they had access to the SDC report.

The situation raises questions of potential conflict of interest. The head of Thematic Cooperation at the SDC, the team in charge of coordinating the audit on FIND, is also a former board member of the foundation, and worked with the current chair from January 2023 until July 2024. If the audit incriminates the chair, it may lead to a permanent withdrawal of funds from the donors who have said they would align with its results. Meanwhile, UNITAID, a former donor, decided to wind down its collaboration with FIND after a January review of two funded projects. Another donor, which had allegedly suspended its payments, resumed support in February 2025 after an audit of its projects revealed no major irregularities. That grant concluded in March 2025 and has not been renewed.

What does the future hold?

Regardless of whether FIND manages to convince donors to return, insiders worry about lasting damage to the organisation’s mission. “FIND’s mandate of creating diagnosis tools at this scale is unique in the world. Each year it saves millions of lives. Even the WHO doesn’t have this capacity to the level we did,” said a source. 

“The employees who were fired are very specialised people, with one-of-a-kind scientific knowledge and expertise in FIND’s mission,” said another source. “They are irreplaceable.” 

The loss of these talents has probably severely affected some of FIND’s programmes. According to sources, many of these programmes have now stopped. FIND assures that donors are still interested in funding the organisation. They say they have received a small grant from the Swiss government for research and have agreements with two other countries for future donations. 

The FSAF’s failure to prevent further damage to the foundation is characteristic of the authority’s cautious approach to sanctioning dysfunctional organisations. In their 2022 audit of the FSAF, the Swiss Federal Audit Office said that the authority has been “very reluctant to take repressive measures” against mismanaged foundations. 

Laurent Crémieux, who conducted the audit, spoke to Swissinfo in a previous investigation published in 2024 into the FSAF. At the time, he depicted an alarming situation. “The federal authorities mainly operate formal checks and rarely monitor a foundation’s activities beyond its founders’ declarations. If all the papers are in order, the foundation gets a green light,” he said. “Someone could operate a business and pass it off as a non-profit, and it would go undetected,” he added.  

In Geneva’s global health sector, “everybody knows about what goes on at FIND,” according to sources close to the organisation, but those directly involved are still too scared to speak. 

Additional reporting by Marija Alberti-Miladinovic, Nerys Avery.

Edited by Virginie Mangin/livm/ds 

This article was revised on September 1 to further anonymise one of the protagonists referred to in the story. This is done in accordance with Swiss media law.

This article was republished on September 22 to specify that some certain sources witnessed alleged abuse of funds. A previous version said all knew of abuse of funds.