Britannia Radio

9 July 2009 UK Serious Fraud Office Revisiting EU Problem You may remember my visit to the Serious Fraud Office with Marta Andreasen in 2005, when we delivered two densely-packed box files of material detailing the scale of the fraud and deliberate financial mismanagement of British public funds by the European Union. The then chief executive Robert Wardle, a weak Blair place-man, took all of two weeks to claim to have read the files and decide they were worthless.  A second attempt to persuade him to examine them also failed. I now know they were never opened.  At a recent re-visit to the SFO, now under new and more vigorous management, I saw those files again.  They were in mint condition, unmarked and obviously as pristine as the day they were delivered four years ago. But this visit in June 2009 was very different.  I had been invited to present an update on the financial state of affairs in Brussels, based on my experiences sitting on the European Parliament’s Budget Control Committee for the last five years.  It took several hours to go through the details.  I even had the opportunity to repeat the amazing story of the Bulgarian deputy prime minister (no less) visiting my office earlier this year to plead for my support for the renewal of EU funds to Bulgaria, on the astonishing grounds that Bulgaria “is no more corrupt than any other member of the EU”. Essentially, my underlying point in 2004 was very simple.  It still is : it is unlawful to provide funds to any organisation (whatever its legal status) which is known to use, or allow the use of those funds for purposes other than those intended. It is unlawful regardless of the status of the sender.  It is unlawful regardless of the source of those funds.  Indeed, it is worse if they are public funds.  Any government has a fiduciary duty of care to taxpayers.  And it cannot be a defence that the organisation is known to be corrupt.  In the UK the criminal law can be invoked.  The crime of malfeasance is defined as “the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law.”  Under that criteria alone, there is a clear prima facie case that the continuing flow of UK taxpayers’ funds to the EU is unlawful.  It may also be criminal, in that the passing of public funds to another organisation known to be corrupt may itself be conspiracy to defraud. Successive British governments have learnt from, now, 14 annual reports of the EU’s own Court of Auditors that the dispersal of up to 80 percent of all EU funds is not, and cannot be properly accounted for.  The reason is also simple.  The EU does not hold itself responsible for the use of those funds once they have been allocated.  They prefer it that way.  It is known as “shared management” and in many EU countries it means no management at all.  Corruption rules! Since our EU club subscription runs to some £2000 per UK resident every year, taken out of our taxation, the wilful neglect by successive governments of this ongoing fraud on UK taxpayers is – or ought to be - a very serious matter. My final suggestion to the SFO at this latest meeting was that they oblige the UK government to withhold payments to the EU, put the money due (at least so long as we remain members of the EU) into an escrow account and tell the EU that they can have the money only when they have demonstrably put their financial house in order. Now that – but nothing less – might just enforce fundamental change. Right now, the ball is firmly back in the SFO’s court. I await developments…but I’m not holding my breath.