Let us hope that this story, told by Daniel Hannan in the latest Spectator, gets around:
Contemplate, then, the case of Hans-Martin Tillack. Mr Tillack is a respected German reporter who has written extensively about the Eurostat scandal. This convoluted affair really deserves a column to itself but, briefly, it involves allegations that millions of euros have been diverted from the budget by Commission officials. More recently, Mr Tillack had started to investigate the broader failure of EU authorities to act on tip-offs. It was this that triggered the reaction. Last month police swooped on his flat. He was questioned for ten hours without a lawyer, while his laptop, files and address book were confiscated. Even his private bank statements were ransacked.
The raid was ordered by Olaf, the EU’s anti-corruption unit. Needless to say, no such treatment has been meted out to the alleged fraudsters. In the looking-glass world of Brussels, it is those exposing sleaze, rather than those engaging in it, who find themselves in police custody. Mr Tillack was implausibly accused of having procured some of his papers by bribery. No formal charges have been brought, and he is now planning to sue. In the meantime, though, the notes he had built up over five years of meticulous work have been seized and his sources put at risk.
The lack of interest in this incident is bewildering. Journalists, after all, are usually exercised by the mistreatment of other journalists. When similar things happen in Zimbabwe, they are the subject of stern editorials. Yet here is the EU intimidating its critics with all the crudeness of a tinpot dictatorship. A message is being semaphored to the Brussels press corps: stick to copying out the Commission’s press releases and you’ll be looked after; make a nuisance of yourself and you’ll regret it. As the EU correspondent of a British newspaper told me mopily last week, ‘If they can do this to a German Europhile and get away with it, people like me might as well pack up and go home.’
God help Britain and God help EUrope (and we atheists only say things like that when matters are very serious) if Britain is bullied by its current crop of idiot rulers into voting Yes to the continuing depredations of this pompous, pious, self-glorifying, self-deluding gang of parasites. We must hope that Mr Tillack has big enough balls and eloquent and powerful enough friends for him to end up ahead in the highly dangerous game that he is now playing on our behalf.
Daniel Hannan MEP seems to do quite well out of the EU system as it stands…if he gets up these antics(Link) on a regular basis it’s no wonder he doesn’t want Olaf checking up on him…..
More CRUSHING OF DISSENT! I blame John Ashcroft.
As we all know, it’s a brick wall. We can all the see the brick wall. It’s there. But we cannot get through it. Stories of corruption, fraud, peculation, well-evidenced, and they are – simply – not – investigated.
There is absolutely nothing the citizenry of European countries can do. Accusations are met either with blank stares and patronising laughter (Chris Patten) or vicious counter-accusations backed up by the power to do somethng about them.
Sad. One can only imagine the internal conflict at the US Major Media pipes – on the one hand, “one of their own” being stifled for investigating Gov’t abuse and corruption.
On the other, the EU is to partner w/ the UN to generate the 2nd Coming, no?
It is indeed extremely concerning but at the same time almost hardly surprising that Herr Tillack’s story has not received more attention from the media.
Fainting In Coyles has provided excellent coverage of the Tillack affair from the day of Herr Tillack’s arrest and the seizure of his private documents and other blogs have also tried to spread the word about this appalling incident.
The media is never going to expose this time share scam in the New Jerusalem anymore than it is going to investigate Oil for Fraud.
Only when it is too late will the “guardians of our freedom”wake up to the dirigiste dystopia growing up around us.
Gorky
Odd that you spend your energy attcking Mr Hannan for pointing out the abuse of power within the institutions of Brussels, I am sure that you could find work here.
Oh by the way Mr Hanna was cleared of any wrongdoing and the case was regarded in the Parliament as a malicious attempt to do down a member for, if I remember rightly ‘carrying out political activities’. Now lets think, a politicain carrying out political activities from his office. How outrageous and wrong.
It is telling that the EU’s “anti-fraud” activities come under the control of a Welsh Labour politician (failed), at least two of whose immediate family are also on the EU payroll.
I was just thinking “yes the E.U. is vile, but the British people are ignorant and-or weak and will do nothing to get out of it” – when I remembered that (in this at least) I am as bad as most people.
In the Euro Election I will vote Conservative (for tribal reasons – I am, like my mother and father before me, a Conservative party supporter), even though I regard the Conservative party policy of reforming the E.U. (rather than smashing it , or at least getting out) as absurd.
If voting was a rational business of supporting the party whose policy one agrees with I would be voting (at least in the Euro election) U.K.I.P.