Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AUSTRIA should allow women to work in its mines, an advocate general of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has concluded. If approved – as is expected – by the full court, the ruling would be a precedent EU-wide, although Britain has allowed women to work in its mines since 1989.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the summer holiday season in full swing, hold those calls to Stockholm: the Swedes have more time off than other Europeans, Germany’s IW economic institute has claimed. In an international survey of holidays taken by workers in 2003 in 14 western European countries, the Cologne-based think tank said Sweden was closely followed by the Netherlands (31 days) and Denmark (30 days).…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in Strasbourg
THE ELECTION of celebrated European Commission whistleblower Paul van Buitenen as an independent Dutch member of the European Parliament in June puts the former European Commission whistle-blower in a unique position to intensify and broaden his anti-fraud campaign.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU) unfair commercial practices directive has been approved by the EU Council of Ministers that bans “aggressive or misleading business-to-consumer marketing” across Europe. These would include traders falsely claiming to be a signatory to a code of conduct, lying that a banned product can legally be sold, and many others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHARGES have been laid against alleged fraudsters in an Italy-based cigarette smuggling scam costing European treasuries Euro 31.6 million in duty. The public prosecutor of Asti, Italy, released details of the alleged con, involving 287,884 kg of cigarettes being smuggled with forged customs stamps being presented to Italian customs officials.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) has laid down rules allowing EU anti-fraud unit OLAF to carry out internal investigations within the institution. The board says the regulations comply with last year’s European Court of Justice ruling opposing its blocking OLAF inquiries into ECB fraud and corruption.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BULGARIAN police – supported by European Union (EU) police agency Europol – have seized and dismantled three major Euro counterfeit currency print shops. More than 400 officers raided dozens of houses across Bulgaria, netting fake banknotes with a face value of Euro 100,000, fake documents, credit cards and counterfeit tourist visas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) anti-fraud unit OLAF has proposed creating an EU FraudNet system, allowing other national and international law enforcement teams to exchange information about financial crime in international aid programmes. This would resemble the USA General Accounting Office’s FraudNET, where whistle-blowers report allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, or mismanagement of federal government funds by e-mail, fax or post.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SWISS government has agreed in principle to charging a flat tax on bank accounts held by European Union (EU) citizens, removing the last hurdle to the EU passing its long-debated savings directive. However, because Switzerland will hold a referendum on the issue, the European Commission has proposed delaying the legislation’s launch date six months until June 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has issued a technical report, advising businesses on safeguarding the trustworthiness of electronically-stored information, including policies, security measures, procedures, and audit trials. It describes procedures whereby an electronic copy may be demonstrated to be a true copy of a data file or a physical document.…