Union’s anti-fraud chief pledges new strategy to fight criminals

Date: 16/03/2000

By Gareth Harding

THE new head of the EU's anti-fraud office Franz Hermann Bruener plans to draw up a strategy for combating Europe-wide graft and corruption by the end of this year, in an attempt to clamp down on criminals who siphon off billions of euro from Union coffers.

Before becoming the EU's chief fraud-buster at the start of this month, the former German prosecutor drew up a highly-praised anti-fraud strategy for Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he led the international community's fight against corruption for two years.

Bruener now wants to transplant the tough tactics he used in the former Yugoslav Republic to Brussels as he seeks to crack down on the fraudsters and address complaints that the Union is slow to act against suspected wrongdoers. "We need to show the public that we take the fight against fraud seriously so that they are sure their money is as safe in Europe as it is in their own countries," the 54-year-old lawyer said in an interview with European Voice.

Bruener insists that the EU "needs to show there is a huge risk of defrauding the Union" and argues that this means raising the profile of the European Anti-Fraud Office, which is commonly known by its French acronym OLAF, among both the criminal community and the public at large. "It is like speeding," he explained, adding: "When there is no control, people drive at 150 kilometres per hour, but when there are radar checks they drive more safely."

The former judge and public prosecutor admits that OLAF does not have a high profile at present, but puts this down to the confused role which the old unit played while it was an under-funded European Commission body with only a handful of investigators. "We were seen as a ghost hovering around the corridors of power," said Bruener, adding that it was essential for the new office to reform, restructure and open its work up to the outside world.

Now that OLAF is independent of the Commission, its head wants to build bridges with fraud-fighters in EU member states and eventually to create a formal network of prosecutors and investigators linking together all the national capitals.

He is, however, lukewarm about the idea of appointing a European public prosecutor backed up by a cross-border judicial system, as suggested by the independent committee of wisemen in its second report on the allegations of fraud and mismanagement in the Commission last autumn. "We have more practical concerns at the moment," insisted Bruener.

The first of these is how to structure a force which will almost triple in size over the next 18 months, from 120 staff now to 300 by the end of 2001.

While promising zero-tolerance in all cases of fraud, Bruener believes that OLAF must first aim to tackle the root causes of corruption instead of sitting back and waiting for it to happen, and then investigating allegations of wrong-doing.

Members of Bruener's staff already sit on all Vice-President Neil Kinnock's committees overseeing the reform of the Commission. In future, he says, OLAF will also have a formal input into the drafting of relevant legislation to make sure it does not contain provisions which could inadvertently tolerate or encourage fraud.

The new head of the EU's anti-fraud office Franz Hermann Bruener plans to draw up a strategy for combating Europe-wide graft and corruption by the end of 2000, in an attempt to clamp down on criminals who siphon off billions of euro from Union coffers.