OLAF: Anti-Fraud Office must play by the book

“The European Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF, must show by example how to play by the rules and not fiddle with its own statistics,” says the EPP Group Coordinator in the Budgetary Control Committee (CONT), Petri Sarvamaa MEP.

“As an anti-fraud office must itself be reliable and accountable, it is deeply worrying to see that it doesn’t provide correct information to its own supervising body. The 2014 activity report of the OLAF Supervisory Committee (SC) shows, like it did already last year, how OLAF is manipulating the statistics to make the duration of its investigations look significantly shorter than they are," says Inge Gräßle MEP, Chairwoman of the Budgetary Control Committee in the European Parliament.

“The SC is the only body that can ensure the accountability of OLAF’s investigative function. As the OLAF DG has provided insufficient information to enable the SC to do its job, the intervention of the Appointing Authorities has become necessary, as the SC states in its annual report,” states Gräßle.

“The European Parliament’s Resolution, voted tomorrow, calls for an end to OLAF’s unprofessional behaviour. The Commission must take proper steps to ensure that the Supervisory Committee can fulfil its functions and lead OLAF back on the right track,” underlines Sarvamaa.