OLAF calls for Convention backing

Date: 12/12/02

By David Cronin

OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud office, believes a key report from the Convention on Europe's future does not adequately address how criminal misuse of taxpayers' money can be tackled.

Franz-Hermann Brüner, OLAF's director-general, wants the constitutional body to back calls for establishing a European public prosecutor to handle cases of fraud against the Union's budget. He is unhappy that a paper published by the Convention's working group on justice fails to share this objective.

OLAF wants such a prosecutor to have the status of a judge, along with power to instruct how investigations should be carried out and to start proceedings in national courts.

The working group's report says its members were divided on how the Union's anti-fraud facilities should be beefed up.

The group - chaired by Irish former premier John Bruton - adds that a "significant number of members" favoured exploring the idea of bolstering the powers of Eurojust, the Union's existing agency for criminal prosecutors, in fighting fraud and other serious crimes.

But Brüner is opposed to that plan. In a letter to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the Convention chairman, he notes that Eurojust's remit is restricted to judicial cooperation across the EU's internal borders.

It would be preferable, he argues, to have a reference to the need for a fully-fledged public prosecutor included in the constitution due to be drawn up by the Convention by next June.

The prosecutor's "key operating arrangements" would be laid down in a subsequent law, he adds.

Brüner's letter has also been signed by Raymond Kendall, former head of international police agency Interpol and now president of the committee supervising OLAF. The two men state that EU institutions lack the wherewithal to effectively honour their duty to protect the Union's financial resources.

The reforms which led to OLAF's inception following the collapse of Jacques Santer's Commission in 1999 were introduced, they say, "as a matter of urgency in four months, that is to say within a period which did not allow for a complete system to be put in place".

"The investigation tools of OLAF remain in theory of an administrative nature and do not include most of the legal means reserved for criminal investigations, which are essential in financial matters, such as having access to bank account details," they claim.

"Moreover, since OLAF's investigations do not extend to the prosecution phase, the number of cases prosecuted and where penalties have been imposed remains extremely limited."

OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud office, believes a key report from the Convention on the Future of Europe does not adequately address how criminal misuse of taxpayers' money can be tackled.

http://european-convention.eu.int/pdf/reg/en/02/cv00/cv00426.en02.pdf http://european-convention.eu.int/pdf/reg/en/02/cv00/cv00426.en02.pdf

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