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From The Sunday Times
September 7, 2008
Peter Mandelson official in cash for secrets row
Insight Team

A top official in Peter Mandelson’s European Union trade department has
leaked highly sensitive commercial information in return for the promise
of financial benefit.

In a six-month investigation, The Sunday Times tape-recorded Fritz-
Harald Wenig, a trade director, passing secrets to undercover reporters
posing as lobbyists for a Chinese businessman seeking insider
information.

Wenig discussed the possibility of payment or taking a lucrative job
with the businessman. He said he would decide further once he had
provided “results”.

He leaked the names of two Chinese companies likely to get special
status if the EU imposes a protective tariff barrier against Chinese
candle-makers. The information is potentially worth millions to those
trading with these companies.

His actions appear to be a breach of European commission regulations and
raise questions about the standards of probity in Brussels, where civil
servants formulate policy affecting trade worth billions with the
world’s main trading blocs.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Mandelson, the trade commissioner, said he
would launch a “comprehensive and thorough" investigation.

Alisdair Gray, director of the British Retail Consortium in Brussels,
said: “Retailers throughout Europe will be shocked and infuriated that
commercial secrets have been leaked from within the commission.”

Wenig, a former lawyer from Germany, is a powerful figure in Brussels.
He was in charge of European tariffs on foreign imports for more than 10
years before becoming director of market access earlier this year.

In conversations with the undercover reporters whom he believed to be
lobbyists, he also: Disclosed that Mandelson will back moves for further
tariffs on Chinese footwear imports – the decision will be revealed to
fellow commissioners on Wednesday. Offered to help a company linked to
the lobbyists’ Chinese client if it applied for special status to exempt
it from the footwear tariffs. Agreed to find out about other companies
who may be given special tariff rates in a commission investigation
involving aluminium foil.

Wenig denied this weekend that he had given away secrets. He described
the information he had given as “semi public” and rejected the idea that
it was commercially sensitive. He refused to comment on whether he had
broken the rules.

http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/ tol/news/ politics/ article4692851. ece