All WTO gambling dispute reports are filled with perplexities and the latest one, the Article 21.5 in US - Gambling dated 30 March, contains many. One that I will call the trade community's attention to comes in para. 5.9 wherein the panel laments the pre-publication of information from its interim report. Apparently, the US government had offered an observation to the panel that the leak originated in Geneva (see para. 5.8). To this, the panel responded (in para. 5.9) that "The Panel wishes to assert forcefuly that neither the Panel nor the Secretariat has done so."
I presume that this forceful assertion of the panel is a finding of fact pursuant to the panel's role under DSU Article 11. If so, I wonder how the panel reached that conclusion vis-a-vis the Secretariat. The panel does not explain how it did so. Perhaps it commissioned an independent investigation pursuant to Article 13. Perhaps the Panel held an additional hearing in which it interrogated all of the WTO staff who had access to the report and heard denials of leaking by all of them.
I hope that one of the above explanations is correct and the panel was not simply jumping to an unjustified conclusion. Like the panel, I too am concerned about the "credibility and integrity of the WTO dispute settlement process."
