A former IBM employee who claims she “blew the whistle” on alleged fraud within the company was told by a High Court judge yesterday her behaviour was “self-serving” and “far from heroic or honourable”.
Mr Justice George Birmingham made the comments after saying the court did not need to take further action against Beate Schmid, of Carnakelly, Kilmainhamwood, Co Meath, over her failure to hand over confidential company information held in digital form.
She had faced jail for not paying a €1,000 fine for contempt of court over failure to hand over a USB memory stick and a computer hard drive containing the information.
Ms Schmid previously claimed she discovered discrepancies in IBM’s sales records. She was initially suspended from her employment and has since been dismissed following an internal disciplinary hearing.
Memory stick
Mark Connaughton SC, for IBM, said yesterday the time period for appealing her dismissal had expired. The company had still not been given a copy of the memory stick or the hard drive, which had led to it bringing a contempt application against Ms Schmid for failure to obey an order to hand them over, he said.
While IBM was satisfied none of the confidential information had come into the public domain, it wanted previous court orders prohibiting her disseminating it to remain in force, counsel said. He was aware her personal and employment circumstances had “changed radically”, he added.
Ms Schmid, who the court heard had discharged a second set of solicitors and was now representing herself, read from a prepared statement saying this was not a simple case but a complex one involving “specific evidence pointing to fraud in IBM”.
Whistleblower
She said she "blew the whistle in good faith" on an internal basis but she never wanted to go public. The issue of the memory stick was only raised after a meeting about "what I had found out", she said. The company seemed more concerned about the evidence she had than about who knew what she did, she added.
Since last April, there was “a lot of massive bad treatment just to make me feel that it was me who was wrong”, she added.
Mr Justice Birmingham told Ms Schmid she seemed to “self-identify as a whistleblower” but “nothing in this case indicates there has been anything heroic or honourable”. “On the contrary, it has been self-serving,” he said.
The question he had to address was whether the public interest would be served by committing her to prison and he believed no further order was necessary, the judge said. He gave IBM liberty to re-enter the matter should there be any further breaches of the court orders.