From Private Eye 1258/12 circa 16 April 2010
BRUSSELS SPROUTS
THE final case report by the EU's anti-fraud office, OLAF, on Hans-Martin
Tillack has come to light - and it does nothing to rescue the fraud-busters'
tarnished reputation.
As Eye readers will recall, OLAF ruthlessly hounded Tillack, a German journalist
working in Brussels, after he obtained internal documents and published
embarrassing EU exposes. 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 emerging victorious.
This final report shows that there was never any substantive evidence for
accusations that Tillack had bribed officials to get documents. No big surprise
there. But the report also shows the extent of OLAF's bad faith.
For example, the fraud-busters said they would not access files confiscated from
Tillack by the Belgians until various court proceedings had finished. Oops! The
final case report shows OLAF was exchanging details from Tillack's files with
Inspecteur Knackeur throughout 2005 and 2006, while court cases continued.
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 ruled 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 repeatedly claiming that it did not have any influence over OLAF's operations. Oops again!
OLAF head Franz-Hermann Brüner died
unexpectedly in January, and the commission decided to replace him with
Britain's Nicholas Ilett. This has provoked howls of protest from the European
parliament, which says that under EU law it should have been consulted and "the
commission's decision is illegal and puts at risk all cases presently handled by
OLAF."
As the EU hands out more taxpayer cash to big
business, BAE Systems is to share £33m set aside for research to help it to
develop technologies to snoop on ED citizens.
One project, SCIIMS [ said SKIMS as in in skims 10% off the top - Editor
], for "strategic crime and immigration information management
system", will create "a secure information infrastructure in accordance with ED
crime and immigration agencies' information needs". It will allow multiple
systems to be scanned in order to "predict, analyze and intervene" in crime
before it happens.
Another project, catchily named ADABTS, or Automatic Detection of Abnormal
Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces, is about teaching CCTV how to "make
inferences about the acceptability of human behaviour".
The European Commission told Private Eye the projects were put through "rigorous
ethical review" before the cash was handed out (though somehow it missed the
dubious record of the leading participant, BAE Systems, which has paid out
enormous fines to settle corruption cases against it).
The commission added that the projects were not linked to any particular EU
policy. But they will, however, fit with some of the ideas contained in the new
EU internal security strategy, as detailed in the last Eye. And any new
technologies will be the property not of the taxpayers who paid to develop them,
but of BAE and its chums, meaning bonanza time when BAE sells them back to
Brussels.
Private Eye does not mention BAE Systems track record of delivering shoddy rubbish late after various cost over runs.