Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SUGAR buyers have been stung by fraudsters offering consignments of non-existent sugar via the Internet, the International Chamber of Commerce has warned. It says that some websites are using “supermarket sales tactics” to advertise cargoes of sugar that never arrive, leaving unwary buyers who pay advances out of pocket.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PRACTICE of allowing companies to deduct bribes paid to secure contracts overseas from their domestic tax bills is still widespread, with a United Nations report saying it was allowed in 50 per cent of countries surveyed. The paper on how the organisation’s 1996 declaration against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions said that it was however banned in Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Iceland, Nigeria, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTERNATIONAL cooperation is to be stepped up to fight travel document fraud, with border authorities increasingly anxious to restrict the movement of would-be terrorists.

The European Union Council of Ministers (justice and home affairs) has agreed in principle to allow information on counterfeits to be exchanged between its working party on frontiers and false documents and Europol, Interpol, the USA and Canada.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union’s anti-fraud unit OLAF has reacted angrily to the leaking to German news magazine Stern of a confidential dossier of new EU corruption allegations compiled last year by Brussels whistle-blower Paul van Buitenen. Since he handed his report in August to OLAF and the Commission’s administration directorate, officials have been “analysing” its contents and discussing how to follow it up.…

Keith Nuthall
IN a groundbreaking legal move, the European Commission has proposed a regulation that would force courts and other judicial authorities across the EU to recognise an uncontested order secured by a creditor, for the recovery of owed money held in another Member State.…

Keith Nuthall
GIBRALTAR has beaten off an attempt by the European Commission to brand illegal a tax break that it allows for certain “exempt” companies. The British colony won a case at the European Court of Justice, where it claimed that Brussels had wrongfully claimed that by reducing these companies’ tax burden, they were in effect granting them state aid in contravention of EU directives limiting such payments.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A PAPER released yesterday (Thursday) by the financial services of the European Commission says that supervision of the EU audit profession “must be enhanced” in the wake of the Enron disaster. “There are currently no agreed auditing standards in the EU and no European mechanism to deal with such supervision,” the paper notes, adding that the Commission will present later this year a Communication (discussion paper) on auditing strategy.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is “continuously monitoring” developments involving the accountancy firm Andersen following the collapse of the proposed merger between the firm’s non-American operations and those of KPMG, officials have told Accountancy Age.

Brussels is concerned about the implications if Andersen’s practices are picked up piecemeal by local or international firms; if parts of Andersen were sold off to other major accountancy

firms on a local basis this “could justify an inquiry” but each case would be judged on its own merits, the official said.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A RAFT of legal cases are being prepared by the European Commission against eight European Union Member States, to force them to monitor and restrict their production of the key greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

In a bid to make the EU stick to its Kyoto Protocol commitments, the Commission has formally warned Britain, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain and Germany of potential legal actions at the European Court of Justice.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IN an interesting recent analysis of the problems facing livestock and other food producers in Europe, the European Union agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler suggested that one way forward could be through contract farming.

Instead of producing in the traditional way for the open market, he said, producers might consider linking with retail groups or the meat processing industry and delivering precisely what was needed in terms of both quality and quantity.…