Eight held in EU corruption probe
Eight people, including an EU official, have been detained in an investigation into possible corruption at the European Union’s agriculture department, Belgian authorities announced.
Police raided EU and commercial offices in France, Belgium and the Netherlands in an insider trading probe centred on the suspected leaking of early information about EU guaranteed cereal prices.
Two people – including the EU official – were charged in Belgium with corruption and criminal conspiracy and six others detained without charge in France.
“The information available ... at this stage points toward a case in which an official is said to have accepted bribes in return for passing on commercially interesting information to external companies,” said EU Commission spokesman Reijo Kemppinen.
The Brussels Prosecutor’s Office was tipped off by the EU’s internal anti-fraud office and prepared the case for at least a year.
The EU official who was arrested is an “assistant” in the EU’s Directorate General of Agriculture.
Along with a superior, who has not been charged, he was moved to another job within the department once the allegations surfaced.
Details about the exact nature of the fraud or the money involved were not available.
Jos Colpin, the spokesman for the Brussels prosecution office, said the investigation was far from finished since the evidence found, including computer files, still had to be studied.
The new scandal comes on the heels of allegations of financial irregularities in the Commission’s statistical office Eurostat.
