One lobby company was set up by disillusioned Commission spokespeople. They built a successful lobbying company, along the way recruiting other former Commission spokesmen and a few other Commission employees. They made a severe misjudgement in their first years when they thought they could make some money by directly capitalising on their Commission backgrounds and connections. A newspaper wrote of ‘…former insiders using their address books to profit in the private sector’.

They were part of a consortium that had won a massive €23 million Commission contract to run the Commission’s website. The lobbyist’s role, worth about €625,000 over five years, was to write brochures and leaflets. When a French paper suggesting Commission people were cashing in, the Commission investigated whether any rules had been broken, ultimately suspending the contract. Later it became clear that two of the lobbyists had not actually resigned from the Commission, but were on short-term leave, with options to return.

Some years later, the same company got a multi-million Euro contract with the Russian government. A boss at the firm said that their brief involved ‘Russia’s integration into the broader world economy’ adding that the country ‘…does not have a perfect democracy, it does not have perfect human rights, but it has come a hell of a long way’. This was at the time the Russian government was involved in gross human rights violations in Chechnya, suppression of free media and NGOs, and energy blackmail of neighbouring countries.