WRITTEN QUESTION E-0993/01

by Armando Cossutta (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(30 March 2001)

Subject: Lies by Commissioner Kinnock to the Committee on Budgetary Control

A letter sent to Commissioner Kinnock on 26 February 2001 by Mr Reichenbach, Director-General of Administration, and Mr Brouwer, Director, accuses the Commissioner of having lied to the Committee on Budgetary Control in asserting that he had not been informed by the committee of the financial difficulties, disorganisation and fraud observed in the rebuilding of the Berlaymont building.

Can Commissioner Kinnock refute these accusations?

Answer given by Mr Kinnock on behalf of the Commission

(8 May 2001)

The Honourable Member bases his question on an internal note which has come into his possession, dated 26 February 2001 and addressed to me by Horst Reichenbach, Director General of Directorate General Administration (DG ADMIN), and Sipke Brouwer, Director in DG ADMIN.

The assertion made by the Honourable Member in his question that the authors of the note accused me of lying to the Committee on Budgetary Control (Cocobu) is entirely unfounded.

The full record of events is as follows: on 22 February 2001 I compiled a preliminary draft statement for my appearance at a meeting of Cocobu scheduled for 26 February 2001 and sent a copy to Mr Reichenbach and Mr Brouwer, which they received on 23 February 2001. A phrase in the draft statement was misinterpreted and Mr Reichenbach and Mr Brouwer expressed their misgivings in a note which they brought to my office at the beginning of a meeting early on the morning of 26 February 2001.

At that meeting the misunderstanding was cleared up. The note was therefore written, received and dealt with several hours before I attended the Cocobu meeting that afternoon.

The assumption on which the Honourable Member has based his question is manifestly wrong in all respects.

The Director General of DG ADMIN fully supported the text of the statement that I delivered to Cocobu, and was personally present during the Cocobu session in question.

On the issue of information: all dates and data in my speech were confirmed by the Commission's Internal Audit Service in an independent report prepared at the beginning of February 2001. In my statement to Cocobu, I said that services in DG ADMIN were informed by Berlaymont 2000 of a potentially large cost increase of BEF 2,5 billion in January 2000. The services then had this estimate verified by the Commission's external consultants. [] The results of that assessment were received orally in early April 2000 and in written form in a final audit report in May 2000. On the basis of that, in July last year I was informed of the projected cost increase . I will readily provide the verbatim text of my statement to Cocobu to the Honourable Member.

The concerns which I had expressed in the draft which I sent to my services related to the lack of information to me on these developments during the time that the verification of estimates was taking place. With this in mind, I accurately informed Cocobu that I had ensured that the information flow relevant to this issue has been intensified and that I had obtained full information on all significant developments over the recent months.

I did not tell Cocobu that my services had not informed me of a suspicion of potential fraud. Indeed I said the following: an independent external analysis on the short-term financing arrangements for the renovation, and of the legitimacy of payments which Berlaymont 2000 had made up to then was provided in November in the form of a strategy paper by our external consultants. That provided me with the first clear and fully comprehensive overview of the state of affairs. Together with my cabinet colleagues and the Director General of DG ADMIN I naturally studied the analysis thoroughly, and we then immediately decided to take a number of initiatives: because there was a possibility of potential fraud , the whole file was transmitted to OLAF on 17 November. In short, as I accurately reported to Cocobu, I was promptly informed of, and advised on, the concerns of my services relating to potential fraud.

The Honourable Member has made a major error of judgement in making assumptions about the nature and context of the internal note of 26 February 2001 which had been leaked to him by an unauthorised and unknown person. On the basis of that error of judgement, the Honourable Member has entitled his question Mr Kinnock lies to Cocobu and spoken to the press and others of Kinnock's lies.

There have been no lies of any kind at any time and no such accusations have been made by anyone. If the Honourable Member is an honourable man, he will give attention to the facts and publicly withdraw all statements making such allegations.