George and Marta
Brussels Laid Bare
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Eurozone finance chief Jean-Claude Juncker has given his backing to controversial plans for Brussels to vet the budgets of all 27 EU countries before they are put to national parliaments, see here
Seeing that the Court of Auditors in Brussels has refused to sign off the EU budget for 14 years, this is a bit rich. Marta Andreasen, the whistleblower former chief accountant to the EU, writes in her book 'Brussels Laid Bare', that:
the EU's accounting system is massively open to fraud as nearly all its transactions are impossible to trace. Even more serious, I was asked blatantly to contradict financial regulations by signing off accounts, despite knowing them to be untrue. I was not granted the freedom to address these shortcomings, and, worse, actively discouraged from alerting others.
Unauthorised people could log onto the Commission's computer system, add, delete or change transactions – leaving no electronic trail.
We've always known that it was bad but even a hardened eurosceptic is somewhat surprised at quite how corrupt and Stasi-like the EU is – especially our own Neil Kinnock.
Ms Andreasen was dismissed and she tells us that over the 5 years to 2002 the Commission had sacked just one person yet the list of almost 50 cases of proven misconduct included: rape, fraud, forgery,assault, harassment, misuse of funds, theft and possession of paedophile pornography.
Her crime was to refuse to be an accessory to fraud. George Osbourne could act in a similar way but I doubt he will.
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