EXCLUSIVE: Secret whistleblower witch hunt at EU’s EESC

When anonymous letters alleging corruption began appearing at a little-known EU advisory body, its first response was to launch a full-blown hunt for the whistleblower.

The European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels, which has an annual budget of €165 million, has been rocked by allegations that the body’s secretary-general, Isabelle Le Galo Flores, unduly handed out public contracts to her friends and associates.

The first reaction at the top of the EU organisation was to attempt to catch the source of the claims so that the anonymous accuser could face disciplinary action, a secret note reveals.

Séamus Boland, the president of the EESC, sent the note on 5 March marked “strictly confidential” to two security officials, instructing them to gather up all the 50 letters estimated to have been distributed, and “collect all elements that could help to identify the possible perpetrator”.

Daniel Freund, a German Green MEP who received Boland’s note at his parliamentary office from an anonymous source, called for the EESC’s leadership to face “political consequences”.

“If these letters are authentic, then I think they show that this leadership is unfit,” he said.

“People that expose wrongdoing, maladministration, fraud, or whatever it is, should not be prosecuted but celebrated.”

In the note, Boland urged his two security officials to keep their task under wraps. “I would like to emphasise the confidential nature of the task, which I invite you to strictly respect,” Boland wrote in the letter, seen by the Rapporteur newsletter.

Boland gave the officials a broad mandate to collect evidence about how the letters were distributed through the internal mail service of the EU body, saying they should go about their task “by all appropriate means”.

Those methods included collecting “forensics on printers,” to establish whether the letters were printed in-house, whether they were written using EESC computers, and whether they could be traced by “securing relevant video footage,” especially in the areas where the letters were handed out.

Boland offered the security personnel the option of bringing in “forensic specialists within the European Commission,” if necessary.

Insisting on speed in case crucial evidence was lost, he told them to report back to him and his chief of staff, Eamonn Mac Aodha, “exclusively”.

Trade unions representing some of the 700 staff at the EESC have complained about what they saw as a “witch hunt” for the person or people behind the letter.

According to email correspondence, three trade unions wrote to Mac Aodha on 24 March accusing him of “inconsistencies and contradictions” about whether identifying the sender of the letters was an objective of the internal “security review”, which is now concluded.

“You are entitled to obtain documents, to request information from persons you deem useful, to interview and to carry out on-the-spot checks. You should not ask for or receive instructions,” Boland wrote.

Boland, the president of the EESC since last October, wrote that these measures were intended “to compile a comprehensive file for transmission to OLAF”, the EU’s internal anti-fraud office.

An EESC spokeswoman said that Boland launched the investigation because of “staff concerns clearly expressed to him about the irregular way letters appeared on their desks”.

“There is categorically no witch-hunt,” she said.

“The president’s decision was driven by concern for the health and safety of staff given the global security context.”

At least three EESC staffers have individually notified the EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF about misconduct by Le Galo Flores, over the past two years, Rapporteur reported last month.

The security review “categorically did not trawl email or web searches, nor look at CCTV”, said the EESC, and “made a small number of recommendations including how to improve the Committee’s physical mail systems”.

“The file is currently under examination by OLAF, and to date the EESC has not yet been informed of any outcome,” said the spokeswoman. “Under these circumstances, the EESC cannot comment on any aspects related to this file.”

(bw, aw)