Enterprise Estonia Chief Sacked After Two Weeks on the Job
At an emergency meeting today, the supervisory board of Enterprise Estonia voted to recall the head of the agency, Andres Rannamäe, despite only hiring him two weeks ago.
“The agency's image has already been tarnished, whether Andres [Rannamäe] is found guilty or not,” Cinzia Siig, head of the supervisory board, told Postimees today, adding that an investigation into suspicions he was involved with defrauding 570,000 euros from research funds, is yet to begin.
Rannamäe was the head of research company Nordbiochem between 2008 and 2013. That company received two million euros from Enterprise Estonia during that period. Nordbiochem cooperated with Russian company Invivo, which claims the Estonian company owes them 570,000 euros, money that was instead transferred to a company in Luxembourg in 2010, Eesti Ekspress reported last week.
Rannamäe said Invivo asked for the funds to be diverted to Luxembourg, but the Russian company said the request was a forgery.
The vote to recall Rannamäe was not unanimous, winning only by six votes to five.