OLAF's last laugh

27 March 2010

The final case report by the EU's anti-fraud office, OLAF, on the celebrated Hans-Martin Tillack case has come to light, writes Stephen Gardner. As detailed in previously by Eurocorrespondent, OLAF hounded Tillack, a German correspondent in Brussels, over his obtaining of internal documents and his publication of embarrassing stories. In 2004, OLAF encouraged the Belgian police to raid Tillack's home and office. The whole debacle eventually wound up in the European Court of Human Rights, with Tillack victorious. The final report shows that there was never any evidence beyond unsubstantiated hearsay for accusations that Tillack bribed officials to get documents. No big surprise there. But the report also shows the extent of OLAF's bad faith. OLAF said it would not access files confiscated from Tillack by the Belgians until various court proceedings had finished. Oops! The final case report shows that OLAF exchanged details from Tillack's files with the Belgian authorities throughout 2005 and 2006, while court cases were rumbling on. Documents thus obtained were only returned by OLAF to the Belgian authorities at the beginning of 2009, long after the November 2007 European Court of Human Rights ruling in Tillack's favour. OLAF's public position was that it did not interfere with, or have any influence over, the Belgian investigation. In turn, the European Commission distanced itself from the mess by stating repeatedly that it did not have any influence over OLAF's operations. Oops again! OLAF head Franz-Hermann Brüner unexpectedly died in January, and the 'non influential' Commission immediately stepped in to replace him with Britain's Nicholas Ilett. This has provoked howls of protest from the European Parliament, which says it should under EU law have been consulted and "the Commission's decision is illegal and puts at risk all cases presently handled by OLAF." A version of this article was previously published in Private Eye.

 

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