Kritiek Europese Ombudsman op EU-fraudebureau OLAF (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros i, has asked MEPs to put pressure on OLAF, the European Commission's anti-fraud office, to own up to its mishandling of the Hans-Martin Tillack case.

Mr Diamandouros' report said OLAF submitted misleading information to the EU's institutional affairs watchdog between March 2002 and March 2003, twisting the facts on allegations that the German journalist had bribed commission staff.

The report calls for the European Parliament to adopt a resolution asking OLAF to "set the record straight" in order to preserve public trust in the EU's capacity to police itself.

The move also represents the Ombudsman's last resort to get the commission to play ball in a saga that began with Mr Tillack's publication of incriminating information based on internal OLAF documents in Germany's Stern magazine in February 2002.

"A resolution is not binding, it's a political expression", the ombudsman's legal counsel, Gerhard Grill, noted. "If the parliament were to support us, the institution in question would be advised to take it into consideration".

But OLAF is sticking by its guns on the subject.

"We have not intended to mislead the ombudsman and we have not misled the ombudsman", a spokesman said. "This is our assessment after reading the ombudsman's report", he added.

EU data not always up to scratch

But Mr Tillack indicated that the ombudsman's decision is a step in the right direction.

"This could have a helpful effect. In my years as a journalist in Brussels I gained the impression that the EU institutions very quickly resort to statements that are misleading or flatly wrong", he said.

The German reporter is also pursuing a case against OLAF at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in an attempt to retrieve files seized by the Belgian police in connection with OLAF bribery insinuations.

Mr Tillack is set to file his case by the end of this month, after the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg threw out a similar petition in April.

Under parliamentary procedure, the ombudsman's report will probably end up in the hands of the petitions committee, where it could languish for over a year before MEPs vote on the resolution in plenary.

"In this case, I hope things will move more quickly", Mr Grill remarked.