OLAF risks tighter control after Stern journalist arrest

By Martin Banks and David Cronin

Date: 22/07/04

THE board monitoring the activities of OLAF, the European Commission's anti-fraud office, is to consider whether the agency should be placed under tighter control after it prompted the arrest of a journalist.

Raymond Kendall, head of the OLAF supervisory committee, cited the arrest of Hans Martin Tillack, Brussels correspondent with Germany's Stern magazine, as evidence that there needs to be "some judicial oversight" of the office's activities.

Kendall said that Tillack - who rejects allegations he bribed an official in return for confidential information - was arrested "purely on the basis of hearsay".

The five-member supervisory committee is to examine the Tillack affair in detail at a meeting to be held next month.

"I cannot pre-empt what action the committee may or may not recommend," Kendall, a former Interpol chief, told European Voice. "But I believe there are currently weaknesses in the system which need addressing and lessons have to be learned from the Tillack case."

OLAF denies orchestrating the raids, saying that it had merely passed on suspicions to the Belgian authorities, who carried out the arrest. OLAF maintains that it acted properly at all times.

But Kendall said that there had "obviously" been prior collusion with the Belgian criminal authorities.

"OLAF's director-general has more powers than any law- enforcement chief in the world that I know of," he said.

"If they [OLAF] decided that you or I were a suspect, they would have the power to come into our office. As a policeman, if I wanted to search someone's premises, I first had to obtain a search warrant from a magistrates' court.

"But OLAF does not need to do this. There is no control whatsoever.

"If it is to have such powers, there have to be increased safeguards on how it uses these powers.

"There has to be what I call some sort of judicial oversight."

Responding to Kendall's remarks, OLAF chief Franz-Hermann Brüner pointed out that the Tillack affair had been referred both to the European Court of First Instance and to judicial authorities in Germany and Belgium.

"At the moment, it seems very difficult to me to discuss, especially in public, the details of this case with the supervisory committee or any other instance, without running a serious risk of interfering with the conduct of investigations in progress," he added.

An initial hearing in a case which Stern has brought to the Court of First Instance was held on Tuesday (20 July).

Tillack is seeking to prevent the Commission from gaining access to papers and electronic data seized by the Belgian police from his office.

He said that if the EU executive scrutinizes this material, confidential sources could be in danger. "Protection of sources is a cornerstone of free expression," Tillack said.

Separately, the journalist has filed a lawsuit against his arrest at the Belgian court of appeal.

Its final hearing is scheduled for 22 September. Stern is also suing the Commission for defamation in Germany.

MEPs have called for the post of OLAF director-general to be advertised ahead of the expiry of Brüner's current mandate in March 2005.

Report of comments by Raymond Kendall, head of the OLAF supervisory committee.

OLAF: Supervisory Committee http://ec.europa.eu/anti_fraud/about-us/supervisory-committee/index_en.htm

---