21/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - According to the Spanish press, the OLAF report on the flax affair indicates that the responsibility and the competence for carrying out controls and verifications of activities that give rise to the levying of direct aid (like that for flax) belong in the context of the common agricultural policy in Spain, exclusively to the administrations of the autonomous communities (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.12). The report, moreover, stresses that OLAF is responsible for verifying the existence of any fraud to the Community budget, but that it does not give its stance on eventual political accountability. These leaks on the content of the OLAF report corroborate the argument put forward by Commissioner de Palacio, Agriculture Minister at the time, who states the responsibility of monitoring Community aid is incumbent on the autonomous communities but not on the Ministry of Agriculture.