EU ACCOUNTIUNG SCANDAL: The European Commission yesterday decided to sack its former chief accountant two years after she went public about the possibility of the EU accounting system being open to fraud.
Mrs Marta Andreason, who will retain her full pension rights, was found by a disciplinary board to have breached staff guidelines by going public with her accusations.
The Argentinian-born accountant was hired in the aftermath of the disgraced Santer Commission, which resigned en bloc in 1999, as part of an overall drive to tighten up the Commission's administration.
In May 2002, however, she refused to sign off the previous year's €100 billion accounts and was subsequently suspended after saying publicly that the accounting system was "massively open to fraud".
One of her main complaints was that the Commission did not have a standard double-entry book-keeping system.
Yesterday, the Commission said that its former top accountant had "repeatedly and knowingly acted in disregard of her obligations", adding that her conduct had constituted an irremediable breach of trust.