European
Parliament suspends UKIP group’s funding over kickbacks claim
Finance
chiefs claim think tank awarded contracts to donors
Former leader UKIP
Nigel Farage has described such moves against his then-party and its
affiliates as "victimization" of Euroskeptic parties
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
AND MAÏA DE LA BAUME 12/13/16, 7:25 PM CET Updated 12/14/16, 5:36 AM
CET
STRASBOURG — The
European Parliament suspended payment of some €90,000 to a think
tank linked to Nigel Farage’s UKIP because of suspicions that it
obtained donations via improper means, according to a document
obtained by POLITICO.
In the latest of a
series of financial setbacks to hit Euroskeptic parties and
associated bodies over allegations of misuse of public funds, the
UKIP-linked Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE) could be
deprived of €88,924.58 in funding due to the suspension approved by
Parliament’s leaders.
Last month, the
Parliament sought to recover €173,000 in funding from the Alliance
for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE) group of MEPs, of which UKIP is
the dominant member, and suspended payment of €501,000 in grants.
The Parliament has also sought to recover €339,000 from Marine Le
Pen, leader of France’s National Front.
Several other MEPs,
including Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, three others in the
National Front and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, have also faced
requests to reimburse money to parliament. Le Pen’s lawyer said she
would appeal the reimbursement order, and that he expected parliament
to move to recover funds by docking her pay and expenses, as it did
in the case of her father.
This clawback of
European Parliament cash by President Martin Schulz and Manfred
Weber, leader of the center-right European People’s Party, is the
first crackdown against populist groups that use Parliament money to
fund Euroskeptic causes.
A senior
parliamentary source said top MEPs meeting in Strasbourg this week
had decided to suspend grants to the Institute and cut off funds for
the Organization for European Interstate Cooperation (OEIC), another
Euroskeptic body. It was not immediately possible to verify the claim
against the OEIC nor to determine how much money was involved.
A representative for
ADDE said Parliament’s accusation was baseless, while Farage has
described such moves against UKIP and its affiliates as
“victimization” of Euroskeptic parties.
In the case of IDDE,
which describes itself as a think tank, the Parliament is concerned
about how it obtained private donations. In order to qualify for
grants from the Parliament, groups and foundations must prove they
are able to raise a minimum amount of funding from private sources.
Checks by the
Parliament’s finance chiefs on IDDE funding “revealed serious
concerns about the qualification of the donations as ‘own
resources’ — a criterion that needs to be fulfilled in order to
receive funding by the European Parliament,” read the document
signed by the Parliament’s top staffer, Secretary General Klaus
Welle.
“It is also
doubtful the related expenses paid to the donors or to companies with
close links to the donors can be considered eligible expenditure,”
said the document, which was dated December 5 and titled “Note to
the members of the bureau.”
The finance
department suspects the Institute accepted donations from firms and
individuals, only to pay the money back using cash from the
Parliament by awarding them contracts that far exceeded the amount
they had donated.
In one such example,
the document alleged that Kristina Pentti, executive director of the
Libera Foundation in Helsinki, had donated €12,000 to IDDE. In
2015, Libera received three payments worth a total of €20,000 from
IDDE in order to carry out unspecified work.
The Euroskeptic
parties targeted argue that they are being persecuted for practices
that are no different from those of more mainstream groups.
Another example
mentioned in the document involves a firm called Jalte Holding, which
donated €10,000 to IDDE while its director Jorg Altenburg gave
€5,000. A web design firm, whose director is Sander van den Broek,
donated €5,000. IDDE later awarded a €30,000 contract to a firm
called Quid Novi whose director, Eline van den Broek-Altenburg, is
listed on Facebook as being the sister of Sander van den Broek and
the wife of Jorg Altenburg.
The document said
the Parliament was considering bringing the case to the attention of
OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud watchdog. It was only suspending payments
and not seeking to recover more than €580,000 already paid to the
foundation in recent years because of the “risk that it might be
impossible to recover the paid amounts due.”
The Euroskeptic
parties targeted argue that they are being persecuted for practices
that are no different from those of more mainstream groups.
Mischaël
Modrikamen, vice president of ADDE, said he was not aware of all the
details of the probe into the UKIP-related Institute, but added that
both the his parliamentary group and the Institute itself planned to
appeal Parliament’s decisions. There was “no deal” between the
Institute and donors to set up a system of kickbacks, and all
contracts awarded were approved by Parliament’s compliance office,
he said.
“There is a desire
to liquidate them [Euroskeptic groups], to make them pay for Brexit,”
Modrikamen said. “But I have never seen such disdain and violation
of the rules and total absence of any normal process.”
Authors:
Nicholas Vinocur
and Maïa de La Baume
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