After insistence with the European Parliament (EP) to publish a secret Internal Auditor’s report revealing abuses in payments to parliamentary assistants proved to be futile, MEP Paul van Buitenen has now decided to issue a five page summary of its contents on his website.
Now a member of the EP’s budgetary control committee, van Buitenen has taken the initiative to publish the findings on 167 irregularities featured in a confidential report compiled by the parliament’s Internal Auditor while investigating EU funds issued by MEPs to political appointees and assistants.
The report, whose findings are described by the same Dutch Green MEP as “shocking”, examines a sample of payments concerning the €15,496 monthly allowance per MEP to cover expenses and salaries related to human resources.
The internal audit was carried out through a sample of 167 payments from 4,700 made in October 2004.
The sample included 42 ‘lay-off’ payments to assistants of MEPs who did not get re-elected. One assistant received during the lay-off period of 3 months an accumulated monthly salary of €8,890. He accumulated lay-off payments from five MEPs, continuing payments from three re-elected MEPs and payments from four newly elected MEPS, thus receiving at the same time part-time payments from 12 former MEPs during three months.
The internal audit revealed one case of payment of full allowance when only one accredited assistant was hired.
In another two cases, the full allowance was also spent but no assistance was employed.
Another case exposed the payment of the full allowance to a company whose activity is not shown in its annual accounts.
Another two cases brought out the payment of the full allowance to outsourced service providers whose activity had nothing to do with parliamentary assistance. Such activity included the provision of childcare and the trading of wood.
In one case, the audit found that the organisation that was acting as a service provider was fully owned by the former MEP who received the services. The company did not appear to conduct regular business, was established in anther country other than his place of residence, and not mentioned in his declaration of financial interests. The case is being investigated by OLAF.
In the report, the Internal Auditor proposed a reform in MEP assistant salary rules to be implemented by July 2009, at the start of the new parliamentary term.
In 1998, van Buitenen, had risen to fame after his whistleblowing on fraud within the EU commission had indirectly led to the en bloc resignation of its members, at the time presided by Jacques Santer.
Appealing to the EU antifraud office (OLAF), van Buitenen recommended that investigations should not limit themselves to the findings featured in this controversial report, but also to look into all parliamentary allowances of all MEPs.
“There is almost no guidance to the Members on the contents of the assistance contracts to be used,” the summary said. “Present contractual descriptions of the tasks to be performed by assistants are vague and leave room for abuses.”
In a press release issued some time after he published the summary, van Buitenen said: “The parliamentary assistance allowance is €140,000,000 in total, 10% of the annual budget of the European Parliament. I think the findings in this report show that there is ample opportunity for abuse. So far, the European Parliament was not prepared to come forward with concrete proposals to improve the current system. After consideration, I have now decided to publish this summary, with the hope that it will push the Parliament reforms which are necessary.”

ddarmanin@mediatoday.com.m