Unfair play around the choice of new OLAF Director General

Brussels, Belgium /CROSS/ Italian politician and former prosecutor Giovanni Kessler was preferred by the European Parliament as candidate for the head of the EU anti-fraud office OLAF. Euro-deputies dealing with budgetary control and anti-fraud issues, on Tuesday night, 9 November, shortlisted two of the six candidates who were put forward by the European Commission for the prestigious post. The 54-year old Kessler is currently chairman of the Trento regional council, in northern Italy. He was parliamentarian of the Democratic Party in Italy from 2001 until 2006 and also a vice-chair of the parliamentary assembly of the OSCE, a Vienna-based security organization encompassing Russia and former Soviet republics. He also worked for a year in Sicily in the anti-mafia directorate. Kessler got 27 votes, only 3 votes more than the much more suitable candidature of the Frenchman Thierry Cretin who is OLAF “insider” and currently director of the most important Directorate “Investigations and operations”. Unlike him, Kessler is an “outsider” who is not familiar with the specifics and peculiarities of the work in OLAF. According to well familiar sources, pushing in a politician for head of the independent, professional EU office is part of a strategy for destabilization of OLAF and achieving success in the attempts outside unsound interests to subvert the Office and turn it into an instrument for use and influence on some significant investigations concerning the political elite. “Mr Kessler had more votes, but we are going with both names in the negotiations. Personally I favor Mr Cretin, because he knows the shop and could start right away,” German Christian Democrat MEP Ingeborg Grassle told EUOBSERVER. Thierry Cretin is former French prosecutor with exceptional experience in investigations of corruption practices and fraud including on a high political level. His directorate investigates cases of political corruption and misappropriation in European institutions. He himself, knowing perfectly the system from the inside, has declared many times determination for bold reforms in OLAF so that the office increases its efficiency. Thierry Cretin is well acquainted with the problems in Bulgaria and has visited many times our country. In his latest visit to our country he headed the OLAF delegation that held meetings with Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Deputy Prime Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov. On Tuesday the Council has to choose one of the two candidates but the European Commission has the final say and it may disregard the recommendations of both the Council and the Parliament and choose its own favorite. A total ninety people applied for the post Director General of OLAF. After a long contest procedure only six candidates were left. On hearing before Parliament dropped out Belgium’s head of police, Johan Denolf, who came in third, followed by the interim OLAF chief, Nicholas Ilett and the “father” of OLAF, former Austrian MEP Herbert Boesch. Swedish tax authority Chief Christina Gellerbrant, the only woman in the running and self-admittedly with no “Brussels experience”, got zero votes.  The post is up for contest following the death of former OLAF Director General Franz Hermann Bruener, who led the institution from its inception until January this year.  Member states are set to give their opinion on the candidates in the coming weeks, with the Commission aiming to make the final appointment before the end of the year.