Search Results for: France

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) anti-fraud office (OLAF) is in many ways a unique body – a team of expert accountants, lawyers and law enforcement professionals looking for fraud in an annual budget approaching Euro 150 billion, spent by a 28-country international organisation.…

The French motor trade is celebrating victory in a multi-year campaign to persuade the government to tighten up the procedures for payment of value-added-tax (VAT) on second-hand vehicles imported into France.  The French ministry of finance has proposed reforms to the government’s national budget for 2014 that would end a cross-border fraud estimated to have cost the country a billion euros through the sale of about 160,000  used autos in the past 10 years, depressing the market for new France-made and imported cars.…

Plastic banknotes have been in circulation since their introduction in Australia in 1988 and the consensus so far seems to be that they do an excellent job of a key requirement – reducing counterfeiting. It may be that forgers will gain more expertise in time – faking is considerably more difficult on plastic than on cotton-based paper – but the initial reports from larger countries that have taken this route, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have persuaded the UK’s Bank of England to follow them.

THE EUROPEAN Medicines Agency (EMA) has released guidance on the maximum amount of three phthalates that should be allowed in pharmaceuticals, because of safety concerns. These plasticisers – diethyl phthalate (DEP), polyvinyl acetate phthalate (PVAP), and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) – can be used to make medicine capsules.…

MILK will remain “white gold” for Europe’s food sector during the next 10 years, despite the current market difficulties, according to the European Commission’s annual assessment of the industry’s prospects. The report was launched at a one-day conference in Brussels on Friday, December 5.…

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the continuing conflict in the east of Ukraine overshadowed international events last year. But Russia’s cosmetics industry has proved resilient and even maintained ties with Ukraine.

Despite the concerns and challenges, the forecasts for the calendar year 2014 are buoyant.…

CHINA’S huge cosmetics market remains a battleground for the world’s multinational personal care product players and they are still more than holding their own against local manufacturers and brands, especially in higher end segments.

The country’s overall cosmetics and personal care product market was worth Chinese Yuan Renminbi CNY274 billion (USD44 billion) in 2013, according to data provided by market analysts Euromonitor International.…

Plastic banknotes have been in circulation since their introduction in Australia in 1988 and the consensus so far seems to be that they do an excellent job of a key requirement – reducing counterfeiting. It may be that forgers will gain more expertise in time – faking is considerably more difficult on plastic than on cotton-based paper – but the initial reports from larger countries that have taken this route, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have persuaded the UK’s Bank of England to follow them.

PUBLIC procurement for infrastructure projects in the European Union (EU) involving spending EU public money is particularly prone to fraud, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) director general has told Fraud Intelligence.
Speaking in an exclusive interview from his office in Brussels, Giovanni Kessler said that investigations in this area will continue to be a priority for OLAF in 2015, as it has been in 2014.…

ADAPTIVE licensing methods such as that proposed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are indeed useful in the development of medicines for rare diseases, Martin Andrews, the senior vice-president at GSK Rare Diseases, has told the World Orphan Drugs Congress 2014.…