You could try to convince Win32::OLE to convert to/from UTF-8, but I'm a bit unclear on the exact usage.

use Win32::OLE 'CP_UTF8';
Win32::OLE->Option(  CP => CP_UTF8 );
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If that doesn't help, try dumping the exact bytes you get back, and from that maybe you (or we) can divine the actual encoding. Maybe it is UTF16BE or something weird.

use Devel::Peek;
Dump $text;
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