European Anti-Fraud Office
OLAF's concluded investigations include cases relating to EU staff, direct expenditure, external aid, customs and cigarette smuggling.
A 2017 investigation led to OLAF putting an end to an intricate fraud scheme through which more than EUR 1.4 million worth of European Union funds, meant for emergency response hovercraft prototypes, had been misappropriated.
OLAF uncovered the fraud pattern as part of its investigation into alleged irregularities in a Research and Innovation project granted to a European consortium.
The Italian-led consortium, with partners in France, Romania and the United Kingdom, was tasked with creating two hovercraft prototypes to be used as emergency nautical vehicles able to reach remote areas in case of environmental accidents.
It became evident that, in order to obtain the EU funds, the Italian partners had falsely attested to the existence of the required structural and economic conditions to carry out the project.
In practice, once the EU funds were obtained, the Italian grantees used accounting artifices to syphon off money, forging documents attesting false expenses.
A thorough analysis of more than 12 000 financial transactions and payments made in the project showed that part of the EU funds received by the Italian and UK partners had been used to pay off a mortgage on a castle facing foreclosure.
In 2017 OLAF also investigated another major case involving the evasion of anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed on solar panels originating in, or consigned from, the People's Republic of China.
In the framework of this investigation, OLAF, in cooperation with representatives of the Dutch and French customs agencies and the competent Taiwanese authorities, carried out joint enquiries in Taiwan.
OLAF discovered that these consignments of solar panels imported into the European Union were not actually of Taiwanese origin, as declared.
In addition to its investigative work, OLAF also supports the EU Institutions and Member States in shaping tobacco anti-smuggling policy.
Following litigation before US courts, and to address the problem of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes, the EU Member States and the European Commission signed (between 2004 and 2010) legally binding and enforceable agreements[5] with the world's four largest tobacco manufacturers.
[8] For example, most Hungarian authorities have all refused to sign cooperation agreements with OLAF and rarely follow recommendations despite there being high levels of corruption within the country.
[10] Helen Xanthaki, Professor of Law at UCL, has stated: "OLAF is entangled in an ad hoc, fragmented, conflicting and uncodified mess of largely self-imposed operational conventions that are supposed to be applied within the tight constrictions of legitimacy and constitutionality in criminal investigations.
Dalligate OLAF conducted the investigation that lead to the forced resignation of John Dalli, former European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy.
Basing on OLAF's report, Dalli was accused by José Manuel Barroso, the former President of the European Commission, of using an associate to ask for a bribe from a Swedish tobacco company.
[18] Corporate Europe Observatory, a lobbying transparency NGO has questioned whether the Dalli affair had been a politically motivated tobacco industry trap.
