Fired whistleblower to take revenge on Euro commissioners
Fired whistleblower to take revenge on Euro commissioners
By David Wastell in Barcelona12:01AM BST 17 Oct 2004
Marta Andreasen, the former chief accountant of the European Union who was fired last week for publicly warning of the risk of widespread fraud, is threatening to hit back by releasing a number of potentially embarrassing documents.
Mrs Andreasen, who found out on Wednesday that she had finally lost a two-year battle to keep her job, has amassed more than 100 papers that she believes will shed new light on the EU's poor accounting practices. Some of the documents are so sensitive that she has stored them in a bank vault for safe-keeping.
Although she has yet to decide when or how to use them, she believes that they will bolster her argument that the European Commission has failed to set up sufficient safeguards of the EU's £62 billion budget.
Last week, the woman who has been feted internationally for her decision to become a "whistleblower" heard from a journalist that she had been fired without compensation. "I am trying to understand how they get to this level of punishment and this level of revenge," said Mrs Andreasen.
Her sacking was the culmination of a lengthy disciplinary process that left her unable to do her job but also officially banned her from speaking out. She was suspended by Neil Kinnock, the vice-president of the commission, in 2002, and charged with committing an "irredeemable breach of trust" by going public with her claims.
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