Marta Andreasen, the former chief accountant of the European Commission who was suspended last year after blowing the whistle on EU accounts, has written asking to be appointed as head of the commission's internal audit service.
Link: End to Andreasen affair in sight
Her application follows the resignation of the commission’s audit chief Jules Muis who is to leave early next year. ‘Yes, I do want to go back to work for the commission again, why not?’ Andreasen told Accountancy Age. ‘In normal circumstances, I should have a very good chance of the getting the job,’ she said.
Andreasen indicated her application would be a test of Kinnock’s sincerity in reforming the EU budget after a series of scandals, the latest over the Eurostat statistical service.
‘If Kinnock really believes in reform, he would want to get someone into the (audit) job who is also prepared to continue reform. If not it means that all he’s been saying over the past three years is not true and that he’s not in favour of reform,’ she said.
Andreasen, who said she had earlier applied for the post of director-general of Eurostat, said the agency had ‘a really big problem’ because the public now knows there had been extensive fraud going on. ‘I could put Eurostat in good order again,’ she said.
Her accusations about the commission’s accounting methods were vindicated earlier this year by Muis, who told the European Parliament that her charges were ‘factually substantive and correct’.
Kinnock’s office said this was ‘not disputed’ adding that Andreasen was moved from her post not because of her criticisms, but because her working relationships with Kinnock and others had ‘broken down’ and she had gone public with her findings.