UN whistleblower awarded £100,000

A United Nations worker who won her case for unfair dismissal after she blew the whistle on an alleged prostitution racket involving her colleagues in Bosnia was awarded more than £100,000 in compensation yesterday.

A Southampton employment tribunal found that Kathryn Bolkovac was unfairly dismissed by her former employers DynCorp, which has a branch in Wiltshire.

Ms Bolkovac, 41, from Nebraska, said she had been sacked because she wrote an e-mail to her bosses about the alleged racket involving DynCorp workers and UN peace-keeping soldiers.

She been hired in 1999 through a contract from the US State Department to work as a police monitor as part of the UN mission in Bosnia.

Unanimously upholding her claim for unfair dismissal, the employment tribunal judgment said: "There is no doubt whatever that the reason for Ms Bolkovac's dismissal was that she made a protected disclosure." The tribunal also found that she acted reasonably in making the disclosure.

A spokeswoman for Ms Bolkovac's solicitors, Bailey, Wright and Co, confirmed the award was more than £100,000.

The tribunal agreed that Ms Bolkovac's action in sending the e-mail was protected under the 1998 Public Interest Disclosure Act.

In 1999, she sent an e-mail to personnel in the UN and DynCorp saying that some employees were involved in trafficking women and children – some as sex slaves. A few days later, she was demoted and moved away from human rights work. In April last year she was dismissed.

DynCorp denied the claim, saying she had been sacked for falsifying time sheets. But the tribunal said there was little evidence for this.