Brussels, 16/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Belgian and French legal authorities have been carrying out an inquiry over the last few years into serious allegations of fraud and corruption within the Directorate General Agriculture of the European Commission. This affairs focuses on suspicious relations between a DG Agriculture official and large French and Dutch arable crop-growing groups. The official is said to have told certain operators the price of export refunds in advance, and the minimum price offered in adjudications in the "cereals" management committee. It is therefore being treated as a case of insider trading.
In Belgium on Wednesday, two people were placed under arrest warrant by the public prosecutor's office in Brussels: Official "B" (an assistant) from DG Agriculture, of Dutch nationality, who is responsible for establishing prices and quotations for cereals transactions in management committees; and the representative of a French negotiating group. "The Dutch official is strongly suspected of having transmitted confidential information of great economic and strategic importance to the cereals sector", explains the Brussels office in a press release. In France, six arrests have been notified.
The European Commission, for its part, decided on Thursday to place the accused Dutch official and another Grade A official who also works in DG Agriculture in different jobs, as a precaution. The Commission stresses that according to the information it possesses at this stage, an official is said to have accepted "backhanders in exchange for providing outside companies with commercially interesting information". In 2001, the Antifraud Office of the EU (Olaf) got wind of the existence of similar dubious transactions, and referred the matter to the Belgian legal authorities. The Commission stated that in 2001, by request of the Belgian authorities, it removed an official's immunity and circumspection obligation, allowing them to answer the investigators' questions.