Current and former World Economic Forum (WEF) staff have accused its founder of hiring "nobodies" to make himself irreplaceable.
The group of anonymous whistle-blowers fear the 82-year-old German economist will "die with his boots on" leaving no-one able to take the helm of the annual gathering of the world's financial and political elites in Davos, Switzerland.
Schwab, author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution and COVID-19: The Great Reset, has controlled the WEF since its founding in 1971.
"Klaus has been at the helm of the WEF for 52 years. When he was born, 122 of the 195 states in the world right now did not even exist," the group said. "He is completely unaccountable to anyone inside and outside the organisation."
"There isn’t much of a future for the WEF beyond Klaus not just because there isn’t a clear successor," they wrote, "but also because his managing board is such a viper’s nest that senior leadership will be at each other’s throats the moment the old man pops off."
"In most organisations the next generation of top leadership is faintly visible at the higher levels of management," they continued, "but at the WEF Klaus has surrounded himself with such a group of nobodies at the top that it’s hard to see how any of them could be taken seriously by anyone of consequence inside or outside the organisation."
Indeed, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is one of the names reportedly tipped as Schwab's eventual replacement.
The CEO of one British firm, who also declined to be quoted by name, agreed with the WEF employees' view of Schwab, saying: "My impression is that he will die with his boots on."
The whistle-blowers claimed Schwab chose his leaders for their "loyalty, guile [and] sex appeal," although they claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin personally picked candidates for the country's State Duma parliament on the same basis — a possible reference to Crimea's Natalya Poklonskaya, whose term ended in 2021.
"The quality of people at the top is reflective of the type of people who work for the rest of the organisation," they added.
The "current and former employees of the WEF" said they spilled the beans on the organization's governance issues as they wanted to "play our role in fostering debate about the role this organisation plays in the world."
But they said they wished to stay anonymous as they feared the influential Schwab could ruin their future careers.
"We are hesitant to come forward as Klaus is very well-connected and can make life very difficult for us even after we leave the WEF," the group wrote.
The group said the power of the Davos boss was illustrated when they originally posted their concerns on careers-oriented social media site LinkedIn, only for the comments to be promptly deleted. The WEF denied pressuring LinkedIn to censor the posts.