EU-fraudebureau OLAF oogst veel kritiek (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU anti-fraud watchdog, OLAF, is ineffective and needs tighter supervision according to three external reports presented to MEPs on Tuesday (12 July), following a dogged defense by the organisation's director, Franz Bruner.

"Managerial supervision has remained inadequate and results in serious delays in the processing of files, the lodging of inconclusive reports and results that are difficult to identify", a year-long study by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) states.

The study adds that OLAF's investigations are frequently "rudimentary" with "vague" objectives and follow-up operations that gobble up large resources while adding little value.

The paper points out that while OLAF's staff has more than doubled to 390 since taking over from its predecessor, UCLAF, in 1999, the number of investigations taking more than 12 months has crept up from 51 percent to 62 percent in the past two years and that "little progress has been achieved since 1988" with respect to internal investigations in Brussels.

ECA member Lars Tobisson presented the findings to the European Parliament's budgetary control committee on the first day of a major hearing laying the groundwork for an overhaul of the anti-fraud body by the European Commission later this year.

Supervision a joke

He also noted that problems exist with the inter-institutional supervisory committee designed to ensure OLAF's secret investigations do not violate human rights, while keeping an eye on delays and the institution's spending.

The committee "in no way constitutes a mechanism to monitor the legality of investigations", its input on delays "has no practical consequences" and budgetary oversight is "a formality" the ECA study found, concluding "[the OLAF director's] independence has never been under any real threat".

Meanwhile Helen Xanthaki, academic director of the London-based Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, found that there is "no direct judicial supervision" over the watchdog's activities with "variable and ambiguous protection" for the subjects of its probes and recommended that MEPs should be added to the supervisory committee.

A third opinion given on behalf of European Parliament civil service chief Julian Priestley noted that OLAF sometimes withholds the names of people under investigation longer than necessary, exists under a "patchwork" of oversight mechanisms and wastes resorces chasing small irregularities that could be dealt with more efficiently by other institutions.

The largely withering opinions came in contrast to a series of positive reports from Belgian, Irish, Italian and Polish national-level fraud investigators that cooperate with OLAF on customs and VAT investigations.

Bruner bites back

The watchdog's director, Mr Bruner, also opted to focus on "the full part of the glass" while noting that his work has attracted widespread criticism in recent years that has painted a picture of OLAF as "an uncontrolled free radical with no limits to its powers".

The director said that under his stewardship the office has been transformed from a "black hole" under UCLAF to a professional outfit with an electronic case-management system and a clear manual on the basic rights of subjects under investigation.

Mr Bruner said OLAF has "zero tolerance" for corruption and must work in secrecy in order to protect the integrity of its investigations and to ensure that evidence is not destroyed, while pointing out that judicial review over its findings comes from the ECA, the European Court of Justice and member states' own legal systems.

"In this regard, OLAF has not yet lost a single case", he stated.

The director was backed up one of his own magistrates, Philippe Ullmann, who pleaded that OLAF might be more effective if it had police-type powers and noted that the body can only make legal recommendations rather than impose fines, penalties or even administrative sanctions.

"If you call someone to a hearing and they don't want to come, they just don't turn up", he said, noting that lack of subpoena-style authority also complicates evidence gathering.

Mr Ullmann also claimed that OLAF's input into the 2003 Eurostat affair had an important "indirect impact" on the way the statistical office is now run, while its investigations into travel expense fraud at the Economic and Social Committee and into dodgy contract tendering at the Committee of the Regions has also helped shake up these institutions.

EU critical MEPs Jens-Peter Bonde and Hans-Peter Martin scoffed at OLAF's claims of "zero tolerance" however, with Mr Bonde pointing out that only two officials of Eurostat were disciplined as a result of the scandal while in the past year OLAF has trampled on the human rights of German reporter Hans-Martin Tillack by accusing him of bribery and intriguing with Belgian police to have files containing journalistic sources seized.

The hearing continues today, with anti-fraud commissioner Siim Kallas i and justice commissioner Franco Frattini i giving their views on OLAF's future and the commission's efforts to ensure the office is, in Mr Kallas' words "a pillar for trust not a pillar for suspicions".