You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Europe
Transparency At Work IN Eurostat
2003-09-24
The European Commission is preparing to release findings on a scandal over suspected fraud at an EU agency, which is threatening to undermine confidence in the commission.
Sounds like confidence building measures™ are called for...
Two reports will be released under top-secret conditions on Wednesday night to a handful of senior Euro-MPs, but its findings will not immediately be made public.
Doesn’t the word release imply that the findings are being made public?
Commission President Romano Prodi faces tough questioning on the findings in a closed session of the European Parliament on Thursday, amid charges that his team acted too slowly to prevent the problems in the Luxembourg-based Eurostat.
Prodi will provide secret answers to secret questions under double-secret pressure. Hopefully his seat will have a secret ashtray.
The affair allegedly involves cases of double accounting and fictitious contracts, allowing sums of around one million euros to bypass normal budgetary controls. Personal profit was not thought to be the motive.
The real totally atruistic motive will become apparent when the secret report is discussed in the closed room of unknown people. You know the release of the report.
The secrecy over the reports’ launch prompted anger from an Austrian MEP with an anti-fraud mandate. "As the standing rapporteur (against fraud), I refuse to take part in a procedure where I read something in a locked room and then keep my mouth shut," said Herbert Boesch, a deputy chairman of the parliament’s powerful budgetary oversight committee.
Obviously, Mr Boesch thought his job description called for him to expose and correct fraud. A piker of a bureaucrat if ever I saw one.
The first people to read the reports will be parliamentary group leaders, who will see them in a locked room with no photocopier. The reports have been prepared by a commission task force and by EU auditors. The commission sought to defuse the scandal on Tuesday by announcing that investigations into other agencies had not revealed any wrongdoing over the past four years. "We asked the directors general... to see if any of these suspected illegal activities had been going on in their services after 2000, and the answer is ’no’", spokesman Reijo Kemppinen said.
"So obviously there's nothing to get worked up about here, either."
Mr Prodi took over as commission president in late 1999 with a pledge to stamp out fraud and corruption.
Wait a minute! That gues just said the directors general said there was nothing going on...
Most members of the previous commission, led by Jacques Santer, had been forced to resign in the face of claims of nepotism and mismanagement.
So the problem's been taken care of, right?
No current commissioners are accused of profiting from the misuse of Eurostat funds. But some MEPs have said they will call for the resignation of Finance Commissioner Pedro Solbes if they are not satisfied with Mr Prodi’s explanations. The Spanish Government defended Mr Solbes ahead of the report’s publication on Wednesday. "Of course, he (Mr Solbes) has our support, but he is sufficiently responsible... to give explanations and that’s what he’s doing," said Economy Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Rodrigo Rato.
"They're just gonna be in a locked room, without a photocopier. With the lights out...
Mr Kemppinen said that the findings would be completely transparent. "Nothing will be hidden, nothing will be sexed up," he said.
"Once the lights are out, we're gettin' nekkid!"
The alleged abuse of funds at the agency is believed to go back to 1989. But the German magazine Stern quoted a report by the commission’s Internal Audit Service as saying that "fictitious contracts" continued to be concluded in 2000 and 2001, after the present commission took office. Eurostat director Yves Franchet and two of his senior aides have been suspended during the inquiry. Mr Franchet’s lawyers say he denies any fraud and is determined not to become a scapegoat.
It would be very hard to become a public scapegoat of a top secret report released in a locked room with no copier.
Posted by:Super Hose

#2  Prodi will provide secret answers to secret questions under double-secret pressure. Hopefully his seat will have a secret ashtray.

He has already been threatened with double, secret probation. No more toga parties!
Posted by: Tornado   2003-9-24 4:59:39 PM  

#1  Next: Jacques Chirac and the incredible TotalFinaElf money machine...

Then the "Oil for Palaces" bookeeper demostrates his amazing talent for writing two totally different numbers in separate ledgers at the same time.

Keep 'em coming.
Posted by: mojo   2003-9-24 4:29:28 PM  

00:00