Luxembourg, 17/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of First Instance (CFI) has confirmed the July 1999 European Commission decision to dismiss Hubert Onidi, official at ECHO, the European Communities' Humanitarian Office, for corruption and budget irregularities (in affairs that had contributed to the fall of the Santer Commission). The CFI's third Chamber, over which Marc Jaeger presides, rejected the different procedural and legal arguments put forward by the former official. One year after the UCLAF report (the Commission's anti-fraud office, now replaced by OLAF), on irregularities within ECHO, the Commission dismissed Mr. Onidi for the use of forged documents, recourse to mini-budgets and breach of the rules on market tendering with the aim of playing in favour of certain partners. Mr. Onidi is also accused of a conflict of interest for not having declared the amazing salaries, without counterpart, that his wife had received from the company Perry Lux at the very time this company had secured large humanitarian aid contracts with ECHO. The CFI states that the Commission was right in considering that Mrs. Onidi's "exceptionally high" salaries were an undue substantial bonus granted to Hubert Onidi for his role in awarding contracts to the companies of the Perry group.
In 1993 and 1994, one of the four units set up within ECHO of which Hubert Onidi was the head, had negotiated four humanitarian aid contracts with the Perry Lux group for a total of 2,430,000 ecus. Three for former Yugoslavia, the fourth for the Region of the Great Lakes. Hubert Onidi was responsible for establishing and managing these contracts. The first contract was awarded to Perry Lux Informatic and signed by Hubert Onidi in the absence of his director. The second and fourth were concluded with Software Systems Services, and the third with Acadian International Ltd. All three, negotiated by Onidi, were signed by his director Santiago Gomez Reino.
At the same time, Mrs. Onidi was recruited by Software Systems that was to pay her a total of 211,000 ecus over three years for translations. In December 1998, at a hearing before UCLAF, Mrs. Onidi, secretary by training, acknowledged that she had no training as translator although she had "always managed well with languages". She explained that, under contract with Software Systems, she "worked at home in the mornings" and had not kept copies of her work. "One can only note that there is a perfect coincidence between, on the one hand, the date the contracts were concluded with Software and, on the other, the recruitment of the wife of the applicant by a company of the Perry Lux group", the CFI notes.
The CFI thus closed the case of corruption to open that of budgetary irregularities. Hubert Onidi defended himself by saying that the Commission had imposed on ECHO missions that were impossible to carry out due to the chronic lack of personnel, whereas action was "extremely urgent" in the former Yugoslavia and the Region of the Great Lakes. The Commission was aware of and tolerated these irregularities and could not "ignore the fact that contentious contracts were counterfeits drawn up under the responsibility of ECHO, with the sole aim of releasing the essential financial resources for the payment of these "shadows"; this unofficial staff for which, Onidi said, Commissioner Marin had authorised the presence.
Turning to the procedural aspect, Hubert Onidi disputed the presence, within the disciplinary body that condemned him, of Steffen Smidt, the then Director General in the Development Directorate (DG VIII), who, as such, is said to have had recourse to "many false contracts to release the funds necessary for the recruitment of personnel". CFI's answer: Mr. Onidi has not proven the reality of the claimed irregular practices of the directorate general formerly headed by this person (Mr. Smidt). Whatever, even were these practices to be established, Hubert Onidi has not demonstrated "how they would be of a nature to jeopardise the impartiality and objectivity of Mr. Smidt towards him".
Worth noting that, in 1999, the Commission decided not to sanction Mr. Gomez-Reino, Hubert Onidi's hierarchical superior. Mr. Gomex Reino had been singled out by Hubert Onidi, who considered that more complete access to his director's file would have enabled him to demonstrate that the latter had been perfectly informed of the purpose of the four contentious contracts, which was placing unofficial personnel at the disposal of ECHO. Even had that been the case, the CFI explains, non-communication of certain documents "would not affect the legality of the disciplinary decision against him", taken "due to actions in the realm of corruption.".
Finally, also worth noting that this is the first time that the dismissal of an official comes with a cut in their pension. The European Court of First Instance, indeed, confirmed the reduction by a third of the amount of pension Hubert Onidi is entitled to, a penalty that, given the official's forty years of service and his high grade, does not deprive him of "real substantial means", it explains.