Structure
OLAF is a General Service Directorate General of the European Commission. For its investigative and operational tasks OLAF works in full independence. In a Special Report of July 2005 the European Court of Auditors concluded that "the hybrid status of the Office, which has investigative autonomy but reports to the Commission for its other duties, has not adversely affected the independence of its investigative function. Being part of the Commission, the Office has been able not only to benefit from substantial administrative and logistical support, but also to take advantage of the anti-fraud legislation that is available to Commission departments".
OLAF has about 500 staff, out of which 160 are investigators. Many of them are lawyers rather than accountants.
The former German public prosecutor Franz-Hermann Brüner was appointed as Director-General for a second five-year term on 14 February 2006 after agreement between the European Commission, Parliament and Council, but died in January 2010. Director Nicholas Ilett is the acting Director General. UKIP MEP and former whistleblower Marta Andreasen publicly expressed interest in the position in April, and reiterated her view that OLAF should be separated from the Commission. The post was assigned to Giovanni Kessler, former Italian anti-fraud chief, in December 2010
Read more about this topic: European Anti-fraud Office
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, “Be tolerant—even of evil.” Logically the next step would be to say to our commonwealth’s criminals, “I disagree that it’s all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion.” Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
“One theme links together these new proposals for family policy—the idea that the family is exceedingly durable. Changes in structure and function and individual roles are not to be confused with the collapse of the family. Families remain more important in the lives of children than other institutions. Family ties are stronger and more vital than many of us imagine in the perennial atmosphere of crisis surrounding the subject.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)