OLAF’s tardiness under scrutiny

A contractor who was questioned as part of an investigation by the EU’s anti-fraud office challenged the slowness of its procedures before a European court.

The European Union’s anti-fraud office closed an investigation that had dragged on for six years and three months, just two days before it was to face a court hearing challenging its conduct.

Lian Catinis, a former European Union contractor, was interviewed by OLAF in 2007 about allegations of financial irregularities in the management of a development programme in Syria. In 2010 he complained about the conduct and the duration of the investigation and asked for it to be closed. He had lost business as a result of being interviewed as part of the investigation, he argued.

In 2011, he brought a case at the General Court challenging what he said was a refusal to close the file and to give him access to his file. The Commission, on behalf of OLAF, argued that the application should be ruled inadmissible and unfounded. In a judgment published on Wednesday (21 May), the judges ruled in favour of the Commission, which had argued that Catinis’s challenge was inadmissible because he was not challenging a legal act of the Commission, such as a formal decision. They also ruled that OLAF was under no obligation to grant access to documents to someone claiming to be concerned by an ongoing investigation.

The Commission argued that it had not refused to close the case, saying that Catinis never requested that the case be closed, but at the hearing, the Commission admitted that Catinis had made such a request in letters of August and October 2010.

OLAF’s investigation had started in October 2007 following allegations of financial irregularities in an EU programme intended to help reform of the Syrian public administration. OLAF interviewed Catinis the following month in November 2007.

In October 2010, Catinis requested access to certain documents. In June 2011, OLAF refused him access, though although it did provide him with a copy of the transcript of the interview it had conducted with him. (Under OLAF’s 2013 guidelines, all persons interviewed are entitled to receive a copy of the interview.)

Catinis took legal action in August 2011, almost four years after the investigation began (and around the time that the Syrian civil war started). Two and a half years later, the General Court organised a hearing for the case on 16 January 2014.

At the hearing, the Commission’s lawyers revealed that the investigation had been closed two days earlier, on 14 January, according to Catinis’ lawyer.

As the challenge was inadmissible, the court held that there was no basis for assessing Catinis’s claim that the length of the case had breached his fundamental rights.

But the court went on to observe that “the obligation to conduct administrative procedures within a reasonable time is a general principle of EU law” and part of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.

It continued: “It should be noted that, as observed by the applicant, prima facie, the fact that, when the present action was brought, the investigation had been going on for over 41 months may be regarded as constituting an exceptionally long period of time.”

But whether the length of the investigation was justified, by for example the complexity of the inquiry or the conduct of those involved in the case, could be examined only if OLAF concluded its investigation, the judges said.