Euro 'whistle-blower' who plagued Kinnock sacked

The European Commission “whistle-blower” who plagued Neil Kinnock for more than two years was sacked today for disloyalty and breach of trust.

The decision to dismiss Marta Andreasen follows a Commission disciplinary hearing to decide her fate – after 28 months suspended on full pay.

Ms Andreasen, the Commission’s chief accountant, was brought in as part of Vice-President Kinnock’s job of shaking up the EU administration and tightening up accounting procedures to counter allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

He suspended her from her job in May 2002 when, after refusing to sign off the EU accounts, Ms Andreasen went public with allegations that lax accounting left the £63bn (€91.8bn) a year euro-budget “massively open to fraud”.

She complained that the Commission still did not have a global standard double-entry book-keeping system, and that it lacked secure, state-of-the art computer accounting programmes, despite complaints from the European Court of Auditors.

Argentinian-born Ms Andreasen refused to blame Mr Kinnock personally, but British Conservative MEPs seized on the dispute to lead calls for the Commissioner in charge of reform to stand down.

Instead Ms Andreasen has gone – described in a Disciplinary Board finding today as having “repeatedly and knowingly acted in disregard of her obligations”.

The Board backed Mr Kinnock’s argument that Ms Andreasen had been correctly suspended for breaching Commission rules by going public with complaints about well-known flaws in an accounting system she had been brought in to help reform.

A Commission statement said: “The gravity of Ms Andreasen’s conduct has constituted an irredeemable breach of the trust which the Commission is entitled to expect from its officials, and consequently made it impossible to maintain any employment relationship between her and the institution.”

Ms Andreasen’s case has been championed consistently by British Conservative MEPs, who even suggested that she run for political office as a Euro-MP.

The Tories took her to London to speak at a Westminster press conference arguing her case that Commission accounting lacked even basic safeguards, risking undetectable fraud.

Today Conservative MEP Chris Heaton-Harris said: “This dismissal is a vindictive move from a failed Commission.

“All Ms Andreasen did was do her job properly. She raised concerns about EU activities. Neil Kinnock ignored them and has now fired her”.

Ms Andreasen’s clash with her employers was an echo of a similar controversy in her previous job and about which Mr Kinnock claims she kept quiet.

She was suspended as chief accountant of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development pending a review of complaints she made there about accounting standards.

Today’s Commission statement said: “The charges against Ms Andreasen related primarily to her unsubstantiated statements, made against Commission officials and a Commissioner, her failure to seek authorisation for public statement that reflected on her position in the institution, and her failure to disclose essential and accurate information relating to her previous employment and the circumstances of her departure from that employment.”

The sacking, with full eurocrat pension rights, comes a fortnight before Mr Kinnock himself stands down at the end of his term as an EU Commissioner - recently overshadowed by the would-be “whistle-blower” who dogged his last days in office.