Neil Kinnock has been accused of gagging a Brussels whistleblower making allegations of flawed accounting systems within the European Commission.

The vice president and commissioner for administration has been criticised by the EU commission's former chief accountant, Marta Andreason, for attempting to paper over her claims that accounting controls were vulnerable to abuse.

Kinnock moved her when she refused to sign the EU's 2001 accounts, Andreason said yesterday.

"Commissioner Kinnock even tried - thankfully he did not succeed - to prevent me appearing before key parliamentary committees on these issues," she said.

Conservative MEPs are demanding an investigation into the row, which threatens to derail Kinnock's mission to clean up the EU finances after the entire commission was forced to resign over lax control of public money and fraud in 1999.