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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.
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.
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 |