EU auditor in sleaze row over flat, chauffeur and lobbying

THE head of the EU’S spending watchdog is accused of claiming expenses for a flat he barely lived in, using a chauffeur service for non-eu trips and lobbying fellow officials on behalf of clients of a law firm where he is employed.

Klaus-heiner Lehne, president of the European Court of Auditors, claimed about €325,000 (£280,000) of taxpayer money for the property he barely occupies close to the institution’s Luxembourg headquarters, according to a newspaper investigation.

Mr Lehne also took advantage of the EU’S car service, which ferried him between the Grand Duchy and his home town of Dusseldorf, where he was politically active with Germany’s Christian Democrats and worked as a lawyer, for only €100 a month.

The former German MEP, who now earns €24,000 a month auditing the EU’S accounts, was previously accused of lobbying the body’s competition authority on behalf of his clients at Taylor Wessing, a commercial law firm. Mr

Lehne and senior European legislators, with whom he is politically aligned, have threatened to launch legal action to gag journalists seeking to expose EU sleaze.

The main accusation against the ECA’S president involves his four-bedroom apartment, for which he received €3,600 a month. Liberation, one of France’s top newspapers, claimed he spent little time in the flat, and is also renting rooms to his employees.

Each of the ECA’S 27 members, one from each member state, as well as officials and other members of staff, are obliged to be permanently based in Luxembourg. For this, they all receive a housing allowance.

Mr Lehne only visited Luxembourg for official meetings where his presence was required, it was claimed, making the 136-mile trip from Dusseldorf using his Eu-funded chauffeur.

Defending himself, Mr Lehne told senior MEPS: “Everyone is entitled to a subsistence allowance of 15 per cent of their gross salary. Without condition. It’s an accounting rule.”

Mr Lehne was summoned by the European Parliament’s influential budgetary control committee to explain the allegations, which he said “rests essentially on unproven and non-true statements”.

He denied that his address in Luxembourg was bogus and defended his decision to share the apartment with senior officials. “It’s my private business where and with whom I live in Luxembourg,” he said.

Mr Lehne confirmed that he had instructed lawyers to build a defamation case against the journalist behind the Liberation investigation. “We are in the process of deciding if it makes sense to do so or not,” he told MEPS.

Martina Hohlmeier, the committee’s chairman and a political ally of the head of the ECA, sympathised with Mr Lehne’s claim that judges would unlikely back his complaint, adding that she had once had a similar issue.

This is not the first time the ECA has been rocked by scandal. Earlier this year, Karl Pinxten, a Belgian member of the court of auditors, was found to have claimed €472,000 in expenses. After an investigation by EU anti-fraud officials, he was eventually docked two thirds of his gold-plated pension by the European Court of Justice.