Yli-Viikari was fired from the position of VTV’s general manager in the summer of 2021 and from the position of general manager in the spring of 2022. Between the firings, he received a verdict from the district court for, among other things, abuse of office. The district court judgment is not legally binding.
The Helsinki Administrative Court will give its decision on Wednesday Tytti Yli-Viikarin about complaints about their dismissals from the State Audit Office (VTV).
Parliament fired Yli-Viikari from the post of VTV’s CEO in the summer of 2021. Before the firing, the parliament’s audit committee had considered that Yli-Viikari had significantly weakened trust in the appropriateness of VTV’s own financial management and damaged the agency’s public image.
After a six-month notice period, Yli-Viikari planned to return to his background position of general manager, from which he was exempted while serving as general manager.
However, VTV suspended him from the post of CEO at the end of 2021, after which he was fired in March of last year. According to VTV, Yli-Viikari had repeatedly and knowingly acted against the agency’s instructions and had destroyed the agency’s reputation and public trust in its operations.
Before that, in January, the Helsinki district court had convicted Yli-Viikari of abuse of office, breach of official duty and embezzlement. The district court verdict has been appealed to the Court of Appeal, so it is not legally binding.
Yli-Viikari appealed both dismissals to the administrative court.
Regarding the position of CEO, he considers that his dismissal was not based on a particularly compelling reason according to the Civil Service Act, but on the section of the same law, according to which a civil servant can be dismissed when there is an acceptable and justified reason for it, taking into account the nature of the official relationship. According to Yli-Viikari, the director general of the inspection agency does not fall under the scope of this provision, so the dismissal decision is against the law.
Yli-Viikari also disagrees about the extent to which he was asked to clarify matters for the parliamentary audit committee and to which extent he did not. He has denied that he tried to push responsibility onto other civil servants, but says that he tried to clarify the division of work within the agency to the audit committee.
According to Yli-Viikari, the subsequent firings from the post of VTV’s CEO were unjustified. He believes that the pressure of publicity influenced VTV’s decision.
“I feel that there are many different actors in this skein, who must have been under pressure to get the highly publicized figure out of the agency,” Yli-Viikari said in October at the hearing of the administrative court.
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