Official swaps information posts at CoR

By Martin Banks

Date: 22/07/04

A SENIOR official of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) who was criticized in a report last year by the EU's anti-fraud office, OLAF, is to take charge of a new unit at the institution.

Lambrini Yalamboukidou, then head of the CoR's press unit, was said by OLAF to have bypassed correct tendering procedures for printing contracts. She has now been appointed head of the CoR's newly formed, four-strong unit for internal information, protocol and visitors.

The post carries the same grade, A5, as her previous job, numbered under the new staff regulations as an A11 grade, with a monthly salary of between €6,473 and €9,158. The press office, meanwhile, has been expanded and renamed the communication, press, information and events unit, headed by Laurent Thieule.

The Frenchman was head of the press service at the CoR in 1994-98, before leaving to join a sports marketing company.

Yalamboukidou and the then secretary-general Vincenzo Falcone were singled out for criticism in an OLAF investigation into alleged financial irregularities.

Falcone was criticized for failing to contact OLAF after he became aware of irregularities in members' expenses. His appointment to the post of secretary-general was later ruled invalid by the European Court of First Instance. He has been on unpaid leave since February and will take early retirement from September.

On Monday (19 July), the Committee's bureau, meeting in Dublin, approved the appointment of Gerhard Stahl as the new secretary-general.

Formerly in the cabinets of then European commissioners Monika Wulf-Mathies and Pedro Solbes, Stahl has been at the CoR for almost two years and has been acting secretary-general since last October.

A senior official of the Committee of the Regions (CoR), Lambrini Yalamboukidou, who was criticized in a report in 2003 by the EU's anti-fraud office, OLAF, is to take charge of a new unit at the institution dealing with internal communications, protocol and visitors.