Whistleblower goes to EU court
Publish date: 03 January 2005
Issue Number: 1245
Diary: Legalbrief Today
Category: Corruption
The misuse of EU funds and the way the European Commission treats staff who blow the whistle has again been highlighted with a case in the Court of the First Instance, the EU\'s second highest court.
The Financial Times reports Dorte Schmidt-Brown, a Danish official who worked at Eurostat, the EU\'s statistics wing, has gone to court to clear her name after blowing the whistle on alleged financial wrongdoing at her place of work. Schmidt-Brown claims her name was smeared and that the commission did not give her the necessary support during the affair despite pledges to protect whistle blowers after she revealed her concern about a contractor used by Eurostat. A number of senior Eurostat officials are now facing allegations they took part in what Olaf, the EU fraud-busting unit, claims was \'a vast enterprise of looting\'. In another case, Marta Andreasen, the former EU chief accountant, is claiming she was wrongfully dismissed for claiming in public that the EU\'s accounting system was open to fraud. Full report in the Financial Times