Euro-MPs Voice Their Anger Over Collapse Of Cash Control ("A Vast Enterprise Of Looting")

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 1-29-2004 | Ambrose Evans Pritchard

[blam]

Euro-MPs voice their anger over collapse of cash control

By Ambrose Evans Pritchard in Brussels
(Filed: 29/01/2004)

The European Commission has overseen an "intolerable" breakdown of EU financial control while subjecting whistleblowers to vindictive treatment, Euro-MPs said yesterday.

The European Parliament's annual report on the EU's £70 billion budget expressed "extreme alarm" over failures in the commission's accounting system, finding that the books did not add up and large sums of money could not be traced.

The report, drafted by Paulo Casaca, a pro-EU Portuguese socialist, complained that no commissioner had taken the blame for the disappearance of £3 million into "black accounts" at the EU's data office, Eurostat.

Pedro Solbes, the economics commissioner in charge of Eurostat, has refused to accept the blame for abuses described by investigators as "a vast enterprise of looting".

The MEPs' report orders the commission to pay damages to whistleblowers. Yves Franchet, Eurostat's former chief, continues to draw a £144,000 salary plus perks while key officials linked to the downfall of Jacques Santer's commission after fraud allegations in 1999 kept their posts in the machinery.

By contrast, Paul Van Buitenen was suspended on half pay after he disclosed endemic abuses under Mr Santer and Marta Andreasen, the commission's chief accountant, was fired when she said the budget was "an open till waiting to be robbed".

[RippleFire]

Sounds like HUD under the Clintons, only the amounts are smaller.

[RobbyS]

Now is the time for Parliament to grab some controls over the bureaucracy.