Zweedse met Belg, Oostenrijk en Italiaan kandidaat voor leiding antifraudebureau EU (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A Swedish tax official is the only female candidate for the head of the EU's anti-fraud office (Olaf i), with two current Olaf officials, Belgium's chief of police and two politicians from Austria and Italy also in the running.
Christina Gellerbrant is an underdog candidate. The Swedish tax authority chief openly admits she has no "Brussels experience," but has seen Olaf investigations from the other end, as her investigative teams were in the past given leads by the EU's anti-graft bureau.
"It is not for the first time I am the youngest and only woman in the run, actually it happened at least three times before. And I did get the job," she told this website on the margins of her parliamentary hearing on Monday (25 October).
As MEPs lined up their questions and preferences along party lines, Ms Gellerbrant said she is aware "a lot of decisions are political" in the EU legislature, but added that "the job itself is not a political office."
Her ambition is to make the slow and bureaucratic Olaf "a world leading anti-fraud organisation," where investigations are run jointly with national teams and the rights of the defendants are fully respected.
"Some 50 percent of the cases are referred to Olaf and don't come out of its own initiative. Olaf needs to be more pro-active, making risk assessments of where fraud can appear. In order to find fraud, you also have to know where to look," she said.
She also said one of the main problems with Olaf investigations was the fact that it took over two years to complete and be referred to national prosecutors, which meant that a lot of evidence was meanwhile obsolete.
Some MEPs appreciated her "courage" and the fact that she is a "strong woman," but questioned her knowledge about the hybrid EU institution created in 1999 as a consequence of the corruption scandal which brought down the European Commission led by Jacques Santer.
"For 10 months this institution hasn't had a leader. How are you going to assume responsibility from day one?" German centre-right MEP Ingeborg Grassle asked.
Ms Gellerbrant defended her experience and said that from the criticism that was formulated by MEPs and by EU's Court of Auditors, it was clear that Olaf needs rather "someone with managerial skills" than with experience as a prosecutor or judge in order to make the necessary changes.
"The best football players, like Maradonna, don't always make the best trainers," she said, in reference to the two contenders from within Olaf itself.
One of them is Thierry Cretin, a French magistrate who has been working for Olaf for nine years. This, on one hand "makes you the ideal candidate, able to take over from day one," but on the other hand raises the question if he is "part of the solution or part of the problem," Ms Grassle said.
Asked about the "clans" forming within Olaf and working against each other, Mr Cretin admitted there were "groups of people having different approaches," but said those divergencies could be bridged if there was a "clear sense of mission and method of work" so that the investigations are not used to target people or institutions.
Mr Cretin also acknowledged being "part of the history" of Olaf's biggest scandal, involving German journalist Hans-Martin Tillack, who published confidential Olaf documents exposing the corruption affair at EU's statistics office Eurostat, only to have his home raided and his archives seized by Belgian police.
Looking back, the French magistrate said "things could have be done in a different manner," but he maintained that Olaf "did nothing wrong" in passing the information to Belgian authorities. As for "the problem of leaks," he said nowadays there were much less than in the past.
Mr Cretin's bid is in close competition with Olaf's current interim director, Nicholas Ilett, who took over the reins when the previous director, Franz Hermann Bruener, passed away in January. A British civil servant who has been working in Olaf since 2002, Mr Ilett stressed the importance of keeping the service free of any political and national influence.
"If I am appointed director general of Olaf, I will run it as a genuinely European administration, free from national or other external influence of any kind," he said.
Mr Cretin is believed to enjoy the support of the centre-right European People's Party, while the Socialists are rather inclined to back another outsider like Ms Gellerbrant - Belgium's head of police, Johan Denolf.
The only candidate who came to the parliament hearings with a Power Point presentation, Mr Denolf emphasised his "out-of-the-box thinking" and his experience with EU corruption cases ranging from the 2006 "Berlaymont affair" over false invoices for works at the commission's headquarters to cereal fraud by a staff member of the commission's agriculture directorate.
Other candidates include Italian regional politician Giovanni Kessler, who also worked as an anti-Mafia prosecutor in 1985-1996 and an Austrian former MEP, Herbert Boesch, who was in charge of the parliament's position when Olaf was created.
The parliament's budgetary control committee will narrow the shortlist down to two names on 9 November and will then lead negotiations with the commission and member states on the final appointment.