Wikipedia boss slammed for expense claims

Former employee says boss owed $30,000 in receipts

6 March 2008 11:34 GMT / By Katie Scott

It's not been a good week for Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Not only has his break-up with his girlfriend been splashed all over the papers, but now a former member of his staff has hit out at its spending habits.

Danny Wool has gone to the press telling not only of massive expense bills for the Wikipedia Foundation, which relies on public contributions and grants to fund its operations, but also of in-fighting prompted by Wales' spending.

He said: "At one point, [Wales] owed the Foundation some $30,000 in receipts, and this while we were preparing for the audit".

"His credit card was taken away from him, and he was told he had to pay that back."

But Wool says $7000 worth of receipts were returned but the rest went unaccounted for.

In an IM conversation with The Associated Press, Wales denied that his Foundation credit card was taken away, saying it was his decision to stop submitting receipts for reimbursement.

Wikimedia executive director Sue Gardner posted a reply to Wool, on his blog stating: "Jimmy [Wales] has never used Wikimedia money to subsidise his personal expenditures. Indeed, he has consistently put the Foundation's interests ahead of his own, and has erred on the side of personally paying for his own Wikimedia-related expenditures, rather than the reverse".

Meanwhile, Wales told AP: "The board, the current executive director, the previous executive director, and independent auditors have reviewed our books and publicly agree that all of my expenses were appropriate and fully accounted for".