An interesting letter re EU fraud

"As a member of the European Parliament's Budget Control Committee I was this morning permitted to read a copy of Internal Audit Report 06/02 on the parliamentary assistance allowance paid to MEPs for the employment of their staff.

I write to request that you immediately provide the Director-General of OLAF with a copy of this report.OLAF was established to uphold the principle that the European Institutions have a duty to guarantee, with regard to the taxpayer, the best use of their money and in particular to fight as effectively as possible against fraud and any other illegal activity harmful to the financial interests of the Community.

In my view the findings of the Parliament's internal auditors most definitely fall within OLAF's terms of reference. They are so serious that it should be assumed that criminal proceedings may follow. I believe that the parliamentary authorities have a duty immediately to open the entire matter to independent scutiny by those experienced in judging what is and what is not fraudulent activity.

In view of the seriousness of this matter I request that receipt of this letter be acknowledged.

Yours sincerely

Chris Davies MEP"


And the response from the EU...

"The European Parliament's competent bodies were informed this week of a report drawn up by its internal auditor on the efficacy of the system of payments to MEPs' assistants. The report was a systems analysis and looked at a sample of 167 payments and their supporting documents from 2004 and 2005. It did not look into individual MEPs' transactions and did not reveal cases of fraud.

The internal auditor, whose role within the European Parliament is entirely independent, confirmed existing concerns that the system of staff employment for MEPs has become far too complicated, with three different methods of contracting staff and 27 different national taxation, social security and administrative systems involved. Some MEPs' assistants work in Brussels and others work in the Member State of their MEP. The complexity of the contracting and payment system has made it extremely difficult to manage, both for MEPs and for Parliament's administration.

As the internal auditor's report has not revealed any individual cases of fraud, he has not recommended referring his findings to the EU anti-fraud agency OLAF. Had the auditor made such a recommendation, the Secretary General would, of course, have acted upon it. It is standard procedure for internal audit reports to be treated as confidential."


As Bruno Waterfield comments on his blog - "This text is a classic example of EU institutional stupidity. Bad news does not exist. And, anybody who says so is a liar (that’s you Chris). Eursoc also explores the mindset. Anyway it is terribly complicated accountancy thing – too complicated for you and definitely, definitely not fraud. Moreover, this actually a technical thing, a “systems analysis”, it is not a political thing.

Anybody who says it is a political thing is being critical. People who are critical are worse than the bad news (that doesn’t exist anyway), see England Expects for another example. To stop criticism, and the possibility people might confuse something technical (above their heads and not their business, i.e. confidential) it must be kept secret."


The EU is profoundly anti-democratic and it is only the power hungryness of this Labour Government and the blind adherence to the pro-EU agenda of the BBC that prevents more of the UK public from realising this. I fear it is all too late now, the Lisbon Treaty will be approved and we will be ushered into the arms of a EU superstate.