Counterfeit consumer goods, such as tobacco products, are particularly well investigated by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), relatively more than fraud in EU funds for the agricultural or regional policies, which represent more than 80 percent of the EU budget. On Monday (June 2), OLAF presented its 2014 annual report and Ingeborg Gräßle, chair of the budgetary control committee of the European Parliament, criticised the fact that the EU’s anti-fraud office had once again missed its duties.
Less than a third of OLAF’s available staff is dealing with the EU’s agricultural and structural funds, even though both represent more than 80 percent of the EU budget. In fact, only 44 investigators (out of 134) are working for this unit, whereas 13 are in the service of the “tobacco & counterfeit” unit, with only a few open cases.
There is an imbalance in the partition of the staff, said Gräßle, member of European Parliament (MEP) for the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP). She pointed out that it’s not OLAF’s duty to follow the interest of the luxury industry or to do the job of custom authorities and national police.
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“They [OLAF] have the luxury industry with a clear interest to help them finding counterfeit goods, but in my view OLAF is not a European FBI. OLAF’s mandate is clearly to protect the financial interests of the EU. This means to protect the EU budget,” she said.
According to Gräßle, it is unacceptable that EU taxpayers pay for investigations on counterfeiting, since the luxury industry itself should take care of that.
However, OLAF Director General Giovanni Kessler denied the fact that investigations are focused on luxury goods.
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“Not luxury goods. Actually counterfeit goods, which includes also counterfeit tobacco, counterfeit shampoo, counterfeit food,” he said.
According to the European Parliament’s amending budget report for 2013, of the agricultural and structural funds around 2.5 billion euros are labelled “at risk,” which means that the regularity of the transactions is not guaranteed.
Kessler argued that the control of these budgets is in general done by member states.
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“On the structural funds, member states authorities have the primary responsibility to investigate on them and they do it. So, OLAF’s investigation on this is limited to the cases of higher impact,” he explained.
Doubts about OLAF’s figures
OLAF’s annual report for 2014 highlights the number of investigations performed by the agency as well as their shorter duration compared to previous years.
According to the agency’s press release, OLAF opened “60 percent more investigations than before its reorganisation in 2012” and concluded 250 investigations, decreasing their duration to 21 months in 2014.
But for Gräßle, these figures are misleading. “Reading the new report, I am experiencing déjà-vu: We are told that, once again, the duration of investigations was cut down,” she said, referring to the OLAF Supervisory Committee, established to reinforce and guarantee OLAF’s independence.
On May 5, this committee denounced manipulations discovered in last year’s report, such as splitting up large cases into a multitude of smaller ones. Gräßle calculated that “the average duration in 2013 of investigations without those distorting effects jumped from 17.5 to 26.8 months.”
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“This means that things were done in OLAF, by the director general, only to lower the duration of the investigations or to boost the figures and now to tell us more trust in OLAF. But I warn everybody: You cannot trust these figures as long as the supervisory committee did not check them,” Gräßle stressed.
In total, 901 million euros should return to the EU budget, OLAF concluded in its report. However, Kessler did give details on the respective amounts to be attributed to the different EU member states.
- Author: Laeticia Markakis, Euranet Plus News Agency
