Three Italians arrested over allegations of buildings fraud

Three Italian nationals have been arrested and charged by Belgian police with corruption involving contracts for European Commission buildings in non-EU countries.

The three, who are being held in custody in Brussels, include a European Commission civil servant working on external delegations, an assistant to an Italian MEP and a businessman, according to the Belgian prosecutor’s spokesman.

The charges made by the prosecutor include corruption of an international civil servant, violation of professional secrecy and criminal conspiracy.

Jos Colpin, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, said: "There were bribes of millions of euros for more than ten years."

The arrests follow one of the biggest co-ordinated police actions against financial fraud in the EU institutions. At dawn on Tuesday (27 March), more than 150 police officers raided more than 30 homes and offices in Brussels, Luxembourg, France and Italy. Offices in the Commission, the Parliament and of private companies were searched in the raids. The Belgian and Italian authorities seized a large volume of documents and computer files.

The Commission first sounded the alarm about possible corruption involving Commission delegations in third countries in November 2004, informing OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud unit. After examining the case, OLAF passed the dossier to the Belgian authorities. OLAF, which is under the administrative control of the Commis-sion but is operationally independent, does not have the power to launch criminal proceedings itself.

A Commission spokesman said that the Commission was a "victim" of the affair and had done all it could to "shed the maximum amount of light on the issue".

The Commission has 132 delegations or offices around the world and spends around €500 million a year running them.

Three Italian nationals have been arrested and charged by Belgian police with corruption involving contracts for European Commission buildings in non-EU countries.