The director general of the Eu’s anti-fraud body, OLAF, should be suspended over his handling of the John Dalli affair, a senior MEP has said.
Speaking in Brussels on 28 May, Ingeborg Gräßle, author of a European Parliament working document on the failings of the OLAF investigation into the affair, said that the evidence of bungled, and possibly, criminal procedures on behalf of the organisation, should force the European Commission to remove OLAF Director General, Giovanni Kessler, from his position.
“Mr Barroso must suspend Kessler,” she said bluntly.
She also said that the Belgian state prosecutor should intervene in the case.
She said that OLAF “really wanted to prove these allegations [against Dalli] were correct. It was not a neutral case.”
She was speaking before the European parliament’s budgetary control committee, of which she is a member, was due to debate OLAF’s annual report. On 29 May, Kessler is set to appear before the committee to discuss the report.
Gräßle said she is urging the European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, to suspend Kessler. “As long as the errors of Kessler are not counted as the errors of Barroso, he [Kessler] must go.”
She said that if the commission president declines to intervene, she would try to instigate Kessler’s dismissal through the parliament.
She insisted that Barroso should not be negatively implicated in the affair. “There is no indication whatsoever that Barroso gave the mandate for the investigation,” she said. She added that in the absence of incriminating evidence against the commission president, “I see him on the victor’s side.”
