MEP says anti-fraud office ‘not to be trusted’

German MEP Inge Gräßle has accused the European Anti-Fraud Office, Olaf, of manipulating figures in its annual report.

The report, published on 2 June, said that Olaf had successfully reduced the length of its investigations compared with the previous year. However, Gräßle—who heads up the European Parliament’s budgets control committee—said in a statement that this is because Olaf split up large cases into many smaller cases, which she said, “were subsequently closed with no discernible investigative activities”.

Gräßle’s comments follow a report from Olaf’s external supervisory committee on the annual report, published on 8 May. This report said that Olaf had artificially boosted the outputs presented in their annual report to make it seem that they were working more effectively.