Maria Bamieh, a lawyer, has claimed over the past eight years that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has failed to provide support after trying to uncover possible collusion between EU officials and suspected criminals in Kosovo. Instead, she said, government officials told her to ignore apparent evidence of collusion in the EU’s rule of law mission, called EULEX. Her work 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 continued to strongly deny Bamieh’s allegations. Speaking for the first time since the settlement, Bamieh told the Guardian that she should have been praised for exposing evidence of corruption, but was instead abused and forced to quit her job. “I believe I should have been praised and supported by the FCDO for raising my concerns about possible corruption within EULEX and the treatment she suffered afterwards, but instead I felt abandoned,” she said. Commenting on the case, the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat, called on the Foreign Office to review its complaints procedures. “It takes great moral fiber and courage to raise your head above the parapet, knowing that there may be significant personal cost. “Culture of cover-up does no one any good. “Perhaps if the Foreign Office strengthened its whistleblowing procedures and increased its transparency, departmental staff would not have to resort to such drastic measures,” he said. Bamieh was working in Kosovo as an international prosecutor for EULEX when she first raised her concerns in mid-2012. Eulex had cost more than €1bn (£703m) to be set up by the EU, promising to hunt down “big fish” among Kosovar politicians allegedly involved in organized crime. Bamieh, a former Crown Prosecution Service and UN lawyer who had worked on war crimes and organized crime, told the court that the FCDO’s failure to support and intervene led to the termination of her employment with the FCDO in late 2014. 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 showed that intermediaries for the official under investigation had discussed stopping the Bamieh investigations with a senior EULEX judge, according to court documents. Another leak appeared to show that a senior prosecutor had shared details of Bamieh’s investigations with a contact of the health ministry official, he claimed. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Bamieh, who worked at the Foreign Office and was 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 UK leader in Kosovo at a bistro bar in Pristina, the capital. The diplomat was handed copies of relevant documents, including transcripts of wiretapping, which showed that the very subjects of her investigations were being illegally informed, as she claimed. Bamieh claimed the diplomat did not look at the evidence, instead advising her to “turn a blind eye”, although this was denied by the FCDO in its response to the allegation. Bamieh also contacted senior embassy officials about the allegations, the documents state. The following year, Bamieh was subject to disciplinary proceedings for car parking offenses and failure to follow procedures relating to work experience opportunities. The disciplinary action paled in comparison to how other EULEX staff were treated in similar circumstances, Bamieh’s lawyers claimed. In 2014, it was announced that the FCDO would reduce the number of its prosecutors in EULEX. Bamieh then received a termination notice in November. Mike Kane, partner at law firm Leigh Day, who represented Bamieh, said: “Whistleblower protection is vital to a fair and functioning democratic society. This is even more so in places where public authority is exercised, such as when our client raised and raised her concerns both in Kosovo and with senior FCDO officials.” Bamieh hopes to give evidence to the foreign affairs select committee about her 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 blame and we continue to vigorously dispute these allegations.”
