CORRUPTION IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT. 600 eurodeputies may be involved into fraud with payment of extra rewards for fictitious activity.

On 28 November 2016, Andrеi Sumаr was invited to a sitting in the European Parliament in Brussels to present petition No 0789/2015 about the Schengen visas traffic. Only a few dozens of invitees and 4 deputies were present in the meeting hall. Later, the Minutes of Meetings was published which specifies that more deputies were present than there actually were.

On the page 11/14 of the Minutes of Meeting of 28 November 2016 sitting of the Committee on Petitions, the following 11 deputies are listed as participated in the sitting:

1. Cecilia WIKSTRÖM
2. Pál CSÁKY
3. Rosa ESTARÀS FERRAGUT
4. Beatriz BECERRA BASTERRECHEA
5. Soledad CABEZÓN RUIZ
6. Eleonora EVI
7. Sylvie GODDYN
8. Julia PITERA
9. Jarosław WAŁĘSA
10. Tatjana ŽDANOKA
11. Ángela VALLINA

However, the video recording of the sitting refutes the information from the Minutes of Meeting. The entire recording, from the first second to the last, shows only 4 deputies.

Andrеi Sumаr testifies that only the following 4 deputies were present:

1. Pál CSÁKY
2. Tatjana ŽDANOKA
3. Jarosław WAŁĘSA
4. Julia PITERA

After the sitting, Andrеi Sumаr went to the tribune and asked Ms Virpi Köykkä, the Chairman of the Secretariat of the Petitions Committee, to write down the list of the deputies who participated in the sitting. Below is the list. It features one more last name, “WIKSTRÖM”. This is the last name of the President of PETI Committee who entered the sitting hall after the sitting had finished. Ms WIKSTRÖM did not participate in the work of the sitting. However, Ms Virpi Köykkä, when she saw Ms WIKSTRÖM, included her in the list. This way, the official list of the deputies who participated in 28 November 2016 sitting of the Committee on Petitions is obviously falsified. Below is the list as written by Ms Virpi Köykkä:

Addition reward for the deputies of the European Parliament

The European Parliament published information on its website that a deputy gets extra reward of 306 euro for one day of participation in a sitting of a committee or delegation of the European Parliament. Besides that, a deputy gets compensation of travel expenses from their country of residence to the sitting location. Usually, sittings take place in Brussels or Strasbourg.
This way, Mr Sumаr has become a witness of fraud committed on 28 November 2016 by seven members of the European Parliament. These deputies were not present on the sitting, however, according to the aforementioned statement of the European Parliament, received extra reward and privilege for fictitious activity.

It should be noted that after we had raised the issue of the European deputies' fraudulent activities, the European Parliament removed from its website the information on the additional remuneration in the amount of 306 EUR, which is paid for one day of participation in the meetings of the committee or delegation. Previously, this information was located at:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/fr/about-meps.html
Now this page contains information regarding salaries and other payments that are received by the European deputies, with the exception of additional remuneration, which has become the object of fraud.
It is seen that the European Parliament is trying to obstruct justice, including by such a primitive method as hiding information from the public.

Investigation of the activities of European Parliament committees

A group of citizens and colleagues of Mr Sumаr paid attention to the question of European Parliament activities. The documents of dozens of sittings which took place in the Parliament were examined. It revealed that in 90% cases the number of deputies indicated in the Minutes of Meetings exceeds the real number of the deputies present in the sittings.

The sitting which took place in Brussels on 11 October 2016 serves as an example of such illegal activities. In the Minutes of Meeting, there are 33 deputies listed as present. However, the analysis of the video recording of the sitting allowed to identify only 15 deputies. It means, that the other 18 deputies were not in the meeting room even for a second.

Below is the detailed analysis of the documents regarding the 11 October 2016 sitting of the Committee on Petitions:

Below is the fragment from the official report about the sitting of PETI Committee (Minutes of Meeting) on 10 and 11 October 2016, page 11/14. It contains the list of the deputies who participated in the sitting. The numbers (1), (2) or (1-2) in parentheses next to the deputy name means that the deputy participated in the work of the committee either on the first day (10 October 2016), on the second day (11 October 2016), or on both days:

The full Minutes of Meeting are available here. According to the information from this document, 33 deputies were present on the sitting on 11 October 2016, below is the list:

Careful review of the video recordings of the morning and the afternoon sitting on 11 October 2016 allows to find out the exact number of the deputies who were actually present in the hall.

Important note: If the camera has caught the deputy at least for a moment, we consider him or her participated in the sitting.

According to the video recording, during the first part of the sitting on 11 October 2016 (09:00-12:30), only 8 deputies were present in the hall (this means 25 deputies were absent).

During the second part of the sitting (15:00-18:30), 9 deputies were present (24 deputies were absent).

It can be seen that the eurodeputies replaced one another: some were leaving the meeting room and the other were coming in to take their seats for some time.

Overall 18 deputies were absent on this day, taking into account there were 2 parts of the sitting. Below is the list of the absent deputies:

1. Axel VOSS
2. Beatriz BECERRA BASTERRECHEA
3. Carlos ITURGAIZ
4. Demetris PAPADAKIS
5. Eleonora EVI
6. Gabriele PREUSS
7. Josep-Maria TERRICABRAS
8. Jude KIRTON-DARLING
9. Margrete AUKEN
10. Marina ALBIOL GUZMÁN
11. Miriam DALLI
12. Rikke KARLSSON
13. Roberta METSOLA
14. Rosa ESTARÀS FERRAGUT
15. Svetoslav Hristov MALINOV
16. Sylvie GODDYN
17. Urszula KRUPA
18. Yana TOOM

This way, the Minutes of Meetings provides distorted information about the deputies which participated in the sitting. It’s important that someone had signed the attendance register instead of the absent deputies. This false confirmation in the attendance register later allow the deputies to receive extra rewards for the activity which they actually had not participated in. The above 18 deputies are suspected in fraud.

Below is a fragment of the video recording of the PETI sitting on 11 October 2016 (duration: 55 seconds) which allows us to better understand what is actually happening in the European Parliament. The video is available at the European Parliament website. This fragment starts at 1:38:00.

On this video, a delegation from Italy is presenting its petition to the Committee. The deputies should discuss the petition and make a decision on it. However, the chairman of the sitting Ms Cecilia Wikström who is the head of the PETI Committee says:

“Thank you very much for your contribution. Thank you so much. Now... The floor is now open actually to colleagues, but there are no colleagues. There is, yeah we only have one colleague with me at this moment. So. Now, I would like to give the floor back to... to... you. To the... your petitioners. Very very short now.”

The chairman of the sitting admits that only one her “colleague” is present on the sitting. Actually, the camera shows only empty chairs where deputies should have been sitting. It remains unclear, who stayed with Ms Wikström (seen on the tribune). The cameras had not caught neither of the deputies in the hall. Probably, Ms Wikström meant a colleague from the Secretariat of PETI Committee who is not a deputy. In this case, Ms Wikström is participating in the work of the sitting alone and makes decisions on behalf of the Committee which consists of 61 members: 34 permanent and 27 substitute.

Such activity is illegal and decisions made on this sitting have no power.

According to Rule 208.2. of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament, “A committee may validly vote when one quarter of its members are actually present.” This way, the quorum is one quarter of committee's members, so this is the minimal number of deputies who can make legal decisions. However, during the sitting of the Committee on Petitions, the number of deputies present in the hall was not stable. Many deputies were leaving the sitting, which leads to the number of remaining deputies not being sufficient for quorum. Sometimes, only 1 or 2 deputies are present in the hall.

The video recordings of the sittings show tens of people, but these people are assistants of the deputies, observers and invitees.

Regarding the 15 deputies who were observed on the video recording of the first or second half of the sitting, their presence was short.

It’s absolutely obvious that Ms Wikström covers up the illegal activities of her colleagues. Analysis of other sittings showed that Ms Wikström also commits similar fraud to get extra rewards for fictitious activities and gets covered up by colleagues.

Probably, a criminal offense of forging signatures of the Members of the European Parliament in the Attendance Register took place in the Committee on Petitions.

In response to accusations of falsifying the Minutes of Meetings, the Secretariat of PETI Committee explained that the Minutes of Meetings are created based on the attendance registers. According to Rule No 148 of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament, deputies sign attendance registers on each sitting to prove their attendance.

The letter of the European Parliament sent to us on behalf of the President of the European Parliament also proves that deputies sign attendance registers in the meeting room.

It remains only to assume that someone signs attendance registers instead of the absent deputies. As the deputies cannot delegate their right of signature to anyone, this situation must be considered as forgery of signatures. This is a crime.

The European Parliament violated legislation on the public access to information.

According to Rule 116 of Procedure of the European Parliament, “any citizen of the Union and any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a Member State has a right of access to Parliament documents”. However, the European Parliament refused to provide copies of the attendance registers “in respect to the protection of personal data of the MEPs and the protection against the risk of falsifying of signature”.

It's important to note that in reply to a request related to another case, the European Parliament provided copies of documents signed by the deputies. The signatures of the deputies were hidden. A repeated request to provide the copies of attendance registers with the deputies' signatures hidden was also rejected by PETI Committee. Probably, the PETI Committee is trying to avoid publicity of the evidence in the case of forgery of signatures of the deputies.

Results of the investigation

Our investigation, which is based on examination of documents related to the sittings in the European Parliament, allowed to draw the following conclusions:

- The fraud with extra rewards occurs regularly. This became possible because of absence of any effective supervision. No sanctions were applied to the deputies for illegal activities.

- There is a collusion between deputies. Those who were present on sittings do not raise the alarm about absence of their colleagues and about falsification of the list of present deputies in the Minutes of Meetings. On the next sitting, the deputies swap roles.

Those deputies who are actually present on the sittings are obliged to raise alarm about the fraud. Concealing a crime is a crime on its own.

Also those deputies who were really present on the sittings bear responsibility for the illegal decisions made in the absence of quorum.

They also bear responsibility for false information published in the Minutes of Meetings.

- According to our estimation, about 600 members of the European Parliament are involved in the fraud. The deputies may have stolen millions of euros. These deputies represent ALL political groups within the European Parliament.

Complaints against illegal activities of the deputies of the European Parliament

Mr Sumаr tried to raise the question of the illegal activities of the eurodeputies before the competent bodies as a natural person. Let us remind you, that Mr Sumаr became a direct witness of the fraud committed in the European Parliament on 28 November 2016. The complaints were submitted to :

-the President of the European Parliament. Besides that, every President and Vice President of political groups within the European Parliament were informed about this situation. After 5 months, the President of the European Parliament replied that everything was legal. However, this response does not contain commentary regarding the specific accusations against the eurodeputies.

- OLAF (European Anti-fraud Office). After 6 months, this body replied that it did not find sufficient reason to hold investigation. It should be taken into account that the statutory objective of OLAF is fighting against corruption in the EU bodies. We can conclude that OLAF is trying to conceal a crime inside the European Parliament. Such position of OLAF raises suspicion about corruption inside this body.

- Judicial investigator of Brussels. After 6 months, the Chamber of Brussels made a decision which blocks holding investigation of the fraud in the European Parliament. This situation deserves mentioning in textbooks on jurisprudence as an example of obvious corruption of the legal authorities of Belgium.

The decision of Chamber will be appealed in the near future.

Harassment of a witness

In Brussels, the criminals carried out a campaign of persecution against the witness of fraud committed by the European deputies. The criminals use methods of psychological and physical influence. The criminals are trying to intimidate the witness and prevent doing justice. The Belgian authorities have taken no action either to investigate the crime or even to stop the persecution campaign. Numerous pieces of evidence allow to identify the crime suspects.
Prompt measures to initiate an investigation of this crime and to protect the witness should be taken as soon as possible.

Two French citizens shared the concerns regarding the situation that poses threat to the rights of the Europeans and to the European democracy. They decided to support the witness despite the risk of being attacked by the criminals. This way, together they have created a non-profit organization ASBL «Justice for all in Europe». From now on, measures against the organized crime will be taken not on behalf of a natural person, but on behalf of an organization.

Lobbyists activities

The fraud in the European Parliament raises the following question: “Can lobbyists and governments of third countries take advantage of the situation described above to blackmail eurodeputies and therefore promote their interests?”

The answer is simple: Yes, Clearly and Absolutely!

In the name of justice, in the name of security, none of the actual deputies should be allowed to be re-elected to the European Parliament!

The full list of the eurodeputies involved in the fraud with additional reward will be published later in coordination with the possible investigation body.

In conclusion, our organization ASBL «Justice for all in Europe» needs support of the citizens who do not tolerate corruption, restriction of freedom of speech, manipulation of public opinion by the powers that be. Volunteers could help us to implement our plans. We also invite to donate to our organization account:
BE 970018 4806 8349

The funds are required to:

-pay to the lawyers who will represent our organization before the national and international bodies in the case of fraud in the European Parliament.

Taking into account that the witness confirms that the deputies representing Spain (Ms Rosa ESTARÀS FERRAGUT, Ms Beatriz BECERRA BASTERRECHEA, Ms Soledad CABEZÓN RUIZ, Ms Ángela VALLINA), France (Ms Sylvie GODDYN), Sweden (Ms Cecilia WIKSTRÖM) and Italy (Ms Eleonora EVI), were involved in the fraud, statements about the crime will be submitted to national prosecutors of these countries to initiate investigation.

It should be taken into account that every eurodeputy is a member of an average of 5 to 6 commissions and delegations simultaneously. Investigation of the activities of one deputy will allow revealing tens and hundreds of other deputies who had committed similar fraud.

-Initiating lawsuits against media and their responsible representatives in several European countries which receive public funding, but hide such important information like the fraud in the European Parliament from public. These media violate the right of the citizens for access to information, freedom of speech and confirm existence of censorship of press in the EU.

-Initiating lawsuits against organizers of persecution of the witness and against the government agencies which cover up the criminals.

-Appealing the decision of the Chamber which blocked investigation of corruption in the European Parliament.

-Other

Together against organized crime!
All are equal before the law! Justice for all!