The European anti-fraud office (OLAF) has unveiled its plans to strengthen the EU’s long-standing fight against corruption, just ahead of a new local development funding cycle starting at the end of 2020, The Brussels Times reported.
The most significant development in the fight against corruption will be the creation of a new independent European Prosecutor’s office (EPPO). EPPO will now be able to conduct criminal investigations and prosecutions in addition to OLAF’s strictly investigative and advisory functions.
In the future, European EPPO prosecutors will be able to work with EU institutions and local authorities in an attempt to counter large-scale cross-border corruption.
Their efforts are likely to speed up the trial. This is necessary because temporary delays can be a legitimate reason for rejecting anti-corruption cases in national courts.
OLAF will be expanding its efforts to prevent corruption from taking place. “We want to enhance training people locally to recognise fraud across all levels. Training locally and gathering information, I think, will be the two main solutions here”, – The Director-General of OLAF, Ville Itälä said.
For now, Vitälä believes that his revisions and the new prosecutors’ office should “significantly raise the success rate” in fighting corruption for the next six years.
Earlier, anticorr. media reported that the Council of Europe accused Ukraine of failing to implement recommendations on fighting corruption. The group of States against corruption (GRECO) stated that Ukraine had fully implemented only five of the 31 recommendations on fighting corruption.
