A prosecutor sacked from his job at the Foreign Office after blowing the whistle on suspected corruption at the EU’s biggest foreign mission has settled with the UK government for more than £400,000.
Maria Bamieh, a lawyer, has claimed over the past eight years that the Department of Foreign Affairs, Community and Development (FCDO) has failed to provide support after she tried to uncover possible collusion between EU officials and suspected criminals in Kosovo.
Instead, she said, government officials told her to ignore obvious evidence of collusion in the EU’s rule of law mission, called EULEX.
Her employment claim was due to be heard by an employment tribunal in May and June this year, but a settlement of just under £423,000 was agreed shortly before the first hearing without admission of liability. The FCDO said it continues to vehemently deny Bamieh’s allegations.
Speaking for the first time since the settlement, Bamier told the Guardian that she should have been praised for uncovering evidence of corruption, but instead was abused and forced out of her job.
“I believe I should have been praised and supported by the FCDO for raising my concerns about possible corruption in EULEX and the treatment I suffered afterwards, but instead I felt abandoned,” she said.
Commenting on the case, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat, called on the Foreign Office to review its complaints procedures.
“It takes a lot of moral strength and courage to stick your head over the railing knowing that there may be a significant personal cost.
“A culture of cover-up does no one any good. “Perhaps if the Foreign Office strengthened its complaints processes and increased its openness, officials in the department would not have to resort to such drastic measures,” he said.
Bamier was working in Kosovo as an international prosecutor for EULEX when he first raised his concerns in mid-2012.
Eulex cost more than €1bn (£703m) to be set up by the EU, with a promise to go after the “big fish” among Kosovo politicians alleged to be involved in organized crime.
Bamieh, a former Crown Prosecution Service prosecutor and UN lawyer who has dealt with war crimes and organized crime, told the tribunal that the FCDO’s failure to support and intervene led to the termination of her employment with the FCDO in late 2014 Mr.
Court documents allege that in 2012 she uncovered a plot to undermine her own corruption investigations into a Kosovo health official. Conversations recorded through court-authorized wiretaps suggest that the official under investigation’s intermediaries discussed the suspension of the Bamieh investigations with a senior EULEX judge, court documents allege.
Another leak is said to show that a senior prosecutor shared details of Bamieh’s investigations with a contact of a health ministry official.
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Bamie, who was employed by the Foreign Office and seconded to EULEX, then raised her concerns with a UK government official in June 2012.
According to her account, Bamieh arranged a meeting with the then-leader of the British contingent in Kosovo at a bistro-bar in Pristina, the capital. The diplomat was served with copies of relevant documents, including transcripts of wiretaps that showed the subjects of her investigations were illegally briefed, it is alleged.
Bamieh claims the diplomat did not look at the evidence, instead advising her to “close her eyes”, although this was denied by the FCDO in its response to the claim.
Bamieh also contacted senior officials at the embassy about the allegations, the documents allege.
The following year, Bamieh was subject to disciplinary proceedings for parking violations and failure to comply with work experience opportunity procedures.
The disciplinary action was in stark contrast to how other EULEX officials have been treated in similar circumstances, Bamieh’s lawyers argued.
In 2014, it was announced that the FCDO would reduce the number of prosecutors in EULEX. Bamieh was subsequently served with a termination notice in November.
Mike Kane, partner at law firm Leigh Day, who represents Bamieh, said: “Whistleblower protection is critical to a fair and functioning democratic society. This is even more the case in spaces where public power is exercised, as it was when our client formed and communicated his concerns both in Kosovo and to senior figures within the FCDO.”
Bamier hopes to testify before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about his treatment of another EULEX whistleblower, Malcolm Simmons.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We have agreed to settle this long-running case without any admission of liability and we continue to strongly deny these allegations.”
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