Accounts row official hid prior sacking

Date: 06/06/02

By David Cronin

THE official dismissed from her post after stating that the European Commission's accounting system was vulnerable to fraud failed to inform the institution she had also been sacked from her previous job.

Marta Andreasen, who was stripped of her post as the Commission's accounting officer last month, had been with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for little more than a year when she was suspended without pay in December 1999.

Yet the Spaniard's official CV says she was the head of the accounting division with the Paris-based body from 1998 to 2001.

Informed sources say her suspension from the OECD followed circumstances broadly similar to those leading to her dismissal by the Commission.

She had fallen out with her superiors after raising concerns about its archaic accounting system.

Earlier this week budget chief Michaele Schreyer acknowledged that an internal Commission advisory group had raised doubts about Andreasen's suitability for the accounting officer position before she was hired.

Schreyer opted, though, to proceed with the appointment due to 'the length of time already spent searching for a candidate' and because she wanted to modernise the Commission's 'accountancy framework'.

Speaking to the European Parliament's budget committee, Schreyer conceded the recruitment 'turned out to be a mistake'. She also accused Andreasen of disobeying instructions from the head

of the Commission's budget department Jean-Paul Mingasson to partially rewrite a paper submitted to him in early April.

But in a letter to Schreyer, dated 30 May, Andreasen linked her dismissal with her criticisms of a new regulation on protecting EU finances.

Arguing that this rule 'aims at hiding the past and making the future more vulnerable', she said she had made her concerns known to Schreyer, who 'only responded to me that I was well-paid as an 'A2' [grade official] to sign off without raising reservations'.

'Whether you acknowledge it or not, I have the right and obligation as a professional accountant and honest citizen, to denounce the financial risks involved in the referred regulation,' Andreasen added.

A final agreement on this regulation was reached between representatives of the main EU institutions in Luxembourg on Tuesday (4 June). Its defenders believe it will reduce the likelihood of fraud because it provides for greater auditing of the use of taxpayers' money.

Meanwhile, the European Court of Auditors has confirmed it will not open a probe into Andreasen's complaint over the Commission's accounting system.

Andreasen. who has now been assigned to Commission Vice-President Neil Kinnock's administration department, refused to comment on the OECD matter.

The official dismissed from her post after stating that the European Commission's accounting system was vulnerable to fraud failed to inform the institution she had also been sacked from her previous job.