Secret Report Uncovers Massive Fraud at European Parliament | The Brussels Journal

Secret Report Uncovers Massive Fraud at European Parliament | The Brussels Journal

Secret Report Uncovers Massive Fraud at European Parliament

From the desk of Michael Huntsman on Thu, 2008-02-21 17:12

Chris Davies, a Liberal Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North-West of the UK, is a member of the Budget Control Committee of the European Parliament. As he told BBC’s Today Programme (listen here), he discovered, quite by chance, that Parliament’s auditors had made a report detailing abuses on a vast scale, abuses that suggest some MEPs are simply plundering the system to enrich themselves.

Notwithstanding that he is a member of the Budget Control Committee, Mr. Davies was only allowed to see the report on condition that he signed all sorts of confidentiality agreements, read the report in a sealed “secret room”, protected by biometric locks and security guards and neither made a copy of nor took notes of the report.

Mr. Davies said the report contained accounts of abuse – let’s call a spade a spade here and call it theft and fraud – on a truly shocking scale. Though individuals were not named he made it clear that the extent of the embezzlement and fraud was on such a scale that it could only be met with condign prison sentences for some of those engaged in such practices.

OLAF, the EU Fraud Squad, had not yet heard of this report which makes one wonder if attempts are being made to bury it so as not to rock the boat and to conceal from the European people the extent to which MEPs are looting the public purse for their own enrichment.