EU Fraud: institutional and legal competence

Abstract

This paper will focus on frauds committed against the budget of the European Union. It will consider the role of OLAF (the European Fraud Prevention Office) which is the lead agency in the fight against fraud. It will consider its powers and its capacity to co-ordinate the activities of anti-fraud agencies in twenty seven member states and the constraints which prevent it from operating in a more effective manner. The paper will also consider the role of other transnational bodies such as Eurojust and Europol and will seek to highlight the degree of fragmentation which exists with a multiplicity of actors involved in policing fraud, a fragmented legal approach and the difficulties this presents in policing sophisticated transnational frauds. The effect of EU expansion on this situation will also be examined and the EU anti-fraud efforts of the Czech Republic will be considered in some detail. The paper concludes that the legal system and the institutions are not yet in place to enable such frauds to be adequately policed

The quest for legitimacy: The European Court of Auditors’ work on fraud

“…Fraud and corruption have been studied from political and legal perspectives (Bastida et al., 2019; Pujas, 2003; Quirke, 2009; Williams, 2013), or by their implications in financial audit (Eutsler et al., 2016). This topic has also been explored with an emphasis on big data analytics from different perspectives: literature surveys (Agostino, Saliterer, et al., 2022; Ngai et al., 2011); identification of new research avenues (Appelbaum et al., 2017; Gepp et al., 2018; Schmitz & Leoni, 2019); fraud factors identification (Huang et al., 2017) and specific technical approaches such as blockchain (Bonsón & Bednarova, 2019), or the use of Computer Assisted Audit Techniques and its implications for the audit outcome (Gambetta et al., 2016).…”

Frauds and fakes in the Australian aboriginal art market

“…If the justice system is a hammer, in this arena it is a rusty one, rarely used. However effective the legal system might be on theoretical grounds to address problems of fraud, in this arena, and many others [21,27], that effectiveness is an illusion.…”

Who corrupts whom? A criminal eco-system made in Italy

“…In 2007 some 6,000 irregularities were reported to the European Fraud Prevention Office by member state agencies (Quirke, 2009). The European budget attracts professionals, criminal groups and opportunistic entrepreneurs who may resort to fraud as a means of rescuing a failing company or expanding its business.…”