Brussels, 11/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - The lawyers defending Yves Franchet, former Eurostat Director General suspended from his post in July this year by the European Commission after his alleged involvement in financial misappropriation, have decided to fight back. According to information reported in the press, they say that the Commission could not have discovered Eurostat management in May 2003 as the internal audit reports made during the current Commission were sent to the central control services of the European Commission early 2000. Such arguments could carry a great deal of weight during the meeting scheduled for 25 September in Strasbourg between Romano Prodi and the members of the conference of presidents of the political groups of the European Parliament.
Furthermore, Mr Franchet and Daniel Byk (director of one the services within this body) filed a complaint in July with the Ombudsman against the Commission and OLAF for "bad administration". The two men refused to be "treated like scapegoats to pay for crimes that they did not commit", their legal representatives write. The latter stress that all the investigations in progress are based on the conclusions of internal audit reports carried out between 1998 and 2001 at the request of Yves Franchet. "None of these reports allows it to be concluded that Community funds were used for purposes other than for Eurostat, and therefore not for the personal gain of officials either", the lawyers say. They go on to add that the recommendations contained in these reports were implemented and that the Commission's control services had the matter referred to them but did not react.
Speaking for his defence, Mr Franchet recalls that Eurostat has, over the past fifteen years, had to face an exponential increase in its workload with the coming of the euro and enlargement, and that given the repeated refusal on the part of the Commission to grant it more resources, Eurostat has had to "outsource" certain tasks, either to national statistical offices or to private firms. According to the lawyers, Eurostat's calls for tenders for work with outside firms were approved by the relevant Commission service and the financial audit approved payment to these firms. We recall that, at the heart of the problem lies the use by Eurostat of private sub-contractors for marketing its statistics, such as the French company Planistati, with which all contracts were suspended to give enough time to complete the inquiries.