c***@zen.co.uk
2004-11-20 00:04:57 UTC
UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY
& ID Group in the European Parliament
Reg. Office: 2 Queen Annes Gate, London SW1H 9AA
Tel. 01322-278878 / 01322-319100 Fax 01322-272958
For Immediate Release 17:30hrs 19th November 2004
Conviction Politics: Anti-Fraud Commissioner has criminal record
The U.K. Independence Party has revealed this evening that another of
the incoming Vice-Presidents of the European Commission has a criminal
record.
Siim Kallas, the Estonian commissioner, was convicted in 2001 of
providing false information during his trial for the theft of $10m
from the Central Bank of Estonia in a oil-trading scam in 1993. He was
acquitted of charges of abuse and fraud in relation to the oil deal.
However, Mr Kallas had also appeared in court just 5 years earlier
when he appeared as a witness following the disappearance of Russian
Roubles from the Estonian Central Bank, of which he was then the
president.
Unbelievably, Mr Kallas has been appointed a Vice-President of the
European Commission, and has been given the anti-fraud portfolio.
UKIP MEP Nigel Farage, who yesterday revealed the embezzlement
conviction of another EC Vice-President, Jacques Barrot, said that you
simply could not make it up.
Mr Farage continued, 'Mr Kallas has presumably been given this
portfolio because of his experience of the subject. It is simply
unbelievable that someone with a conviction for giving false
information should be put in charge of rooting out fraud.
It is now clear that whistle-blowers who highlight fraud in the
European Union lose their jobs, whilst experience and a dishonesty
conviction would appear to ensure promotion to Commissioner. It
certainly gives a new meaning to the phrase conviction politics
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
Further information on Siim Kallas is attached below. For further
information, please contact:
Nigel Farage MEP 07802-597692
Mark Croucher, UKIP Press Officer, 012322-278878 or 07960-584161
Siim Kallas (Estonia)
Vice-President; Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud
Age: 56
Kallas was a member of the Soviet Communist Party, when Estonia was
part of the USSR, from 1972 to 1990. Indeed, for more than twenty-five
years, he was an apparatchik ' eventually quite a high-ranking one,
within the Soviet machine. When he finally ceased to be a Party
member, it was two whole years after the first independence
demonstrations in the Baltics and the Soviet system was falling apart.
During his first European Parliament hearing at the start of his
initial six-month commission term last spring, Mr Kallas was expected
to receive a tough grilling on his communist past, but did not receive
one question on the issue. Here then is his interesting career
history.
Having risen through the Estonian Soviet Finance Ministry, he became
Director of the Central Board of Savings, before an ostensible change
of career saw him appointed Deputy Editor of a newspaper called Rahva
Hääl in 1986. What his cv omits to mention is that this was the
official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. As
John Laughland said in the Mail on Sunday on 3 October 2004, "only
very senior Communists would get such powerful jobs." After a spell
'overseeing' the trade unions, he survived the fall of communism and,
reinventing himself as an ardent free marketeer, engineered a soft
landing back into the world of finance, as the first President of the
new Bank of Estonia.
Kallas is an enthusiast for the single currency who, during his Bank
Presidency in 1992, established the Estonian Kroon and pegged it to
the Deutschmark, but there is more to worry about in this story than
plain europhilia. In accordance with a signed agreement with Moscow,
all the old cash roubles were to be collected and returned to the
Central Bank of Russia. After eighteen months, there was no sign of
the money in either bank. Mounting evidence compelled Kallas and the
Estonian Prime Minister, Mart Laar, to admit the roubles had been sold
on to a third party to add more money to the Estonian Treasury, but
they would not reveal the identity of the buyer. A further year after,
the money was transferred back to the Bank of Estonia. Speculation was
rife that its interim resting place was Chechnya. Kallas was forced to
appear as a witness in court in 1996 over the "rouble hustle" but
nothing was ever conclusively proved beyond the undoubted fact that
something shady had gone on.
But this wasn't Kallas' only trip to court regarding a financial
scandal and next time he was in the dock. In 1993, the Bank of Estonia
secretly transferred US $10million to a Swiss account as part of a
dubious contract in which the Bank was supposed to receive highly
improbable dividends from the oil trade. As the beneficiaries of the
$10 million did not bear any liabilities, Estonia lost all the money.
Details of this scandal only seeped out three years later, and it took
a further four years to put Mr Kallas in the dock, by which time he
had long since left the Bank to found his own political party and had
now become Minister of Finance. He was acquitted of abuse and fraud,
thanks in no small part to the fact that his lawyer was a partner in
the law firm of the then Justice Minister, who was a member of the
party which Kallas had founded. However, even this couldn't prevent
Kallas from being found guilty of providing false information during
the trials. He carried on as Finance Minister regardless until 2002,
that is, when he became Prime Minister.
Despite all this, Kallas incredibly has been appointed to the
anti-fraud portfolio. With considerable cheek, he told the EP at his
autumn hearing that future whistleblowing cases "must be handled as
quickly as possible" under his term of office , this from the man who
evaded justice for seven years over the "Ten Million Dollar Affair."
He told MEPs he wanted to exploit internal audit procedures better,
"as a confidential opportunity to freely discuss how things can be
done better." From the mouth of an old apparatchik, this somehow
sounds rather unsavoury. In a further echo of his totalitarian past,
he told the hearing that "security at the Commission must be
dramatically improved. We must tackle.... unfriendly intelligence
against the Commission."
With awful irony, as the Parliament was listening to all this from a
man convicted of falsifying information during a trial, his
predecessor as anti-fraud commissioner, Neil Kinnock, in a spiteful
eleventh hour act, was sacking whistleblower Marta Andreasen for
alleged "unsubstantiated statements."
Little wonder that Kallas can now afford to show a Soviet disdain for
democracy. He believes the EU should not wait until the Constitution
is ratified to begin implementing its components. "The Commission
should already build on the political commitment to greater
integration expressed by member states", he replied, when asked which
parts of the Constitution he intended to implement before
ratification.
Text of UKIP Press Release issued 19 November 2004
Sack Barrot says UKIP, as Barroso admits ignorance. European
Commission Vice-President Jacques Barrot should be fired immediately
following the admission today at a press conference by staff of
Commission President Juan Manuel Barroso that he knew nothing about M.
Barrot's embezzlement conviction until it was revealed in the European
Parliament by UKIP MEP Nigel Farage.
UKIP said it was clear that both the Commission and the Parliament
were hoodwinked into accepting M. Barrot, and that, having withheld
the information, M.Barrot should be fired immediately.
Mr Farage said, "Only yesterday, Mr Barroso accepted in principle that
he should fire Commissioners who had lost the confidence of the
European Parliament. He now has an ideal opportunity to prove he is a
man of his word by doing just that to M. Barrot.
"M. Barrot chose not to make either the Commission President or the
Parliament aware that he had a conviction for embezzlement. It is
inconceivable that he simply 'forgot to mention it', and he should be
sacked immediately in order to regain what little public confidence
the Commission had in the first place."
ENDS
Note: European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso admitted at
a press conference this morning that he was not previously aware of
the conviction for embezzlement of Commission Vice-President Jacques
Barrot before yesterday's parliamentary session in Strasbourg.
& ID Group in the European Parliament
Reg. Office: 2 Queen Annes Gate, London SW1H 9AA
Tel. 01322-278878 / 01322-319100 Fax 01322-272958
For Immediate Release 17:30hrs 19th November 2004
Conviction Politics: Anti-Fraud Commissioner has criminal record
The U.K. Independence Party has revealed this evening that another of
the incoming Vice-Presidents of the European Commission has a criminal
record.
Siim Kallas, the Estonian commissioner, was convicted in 2001 of
providing false information during his trial for the theft of $10m
from the Central Bank of Estonia in a oil-trading scam in 1993. He was
acquitted of charges of abuse and fraud in relation to the oil deal.
However, Mr Kallas had also appeared in court just 5 years earlier
when he appeared as a witness following the disappearance of Russian
Roubles from the Estonian Central Bank, of which he was then the
president.
Unbelievably, Mr Kallas has been appointed a Vice-President of the
European Commission, and has been given the anti-fraud portfolio.
UKIP MEP Nigel Farage, who yesterday revealed the embezzlement
conviction of another EC Vice-President, Jacques Barrot, said that you
simply could not make it up.
Mr Farage continued, 'Mr Kallas has presumably been given this
portfolio because of his experience of the subject. It is simply
unbelievable that someone with a conviction for giving false
information should be put in charge of rooting out fraud.
It is now clear that whistle-blowers who highlight fraud in the
European Union lose their jobs, whilst experience and a dishonesty
conviction would appear to ensure promotion to Commissioner. It
certainly gives a new meaning to the phrase conviction politics
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
Further information on Siim Kallas is attached below. For further
information, please contact:
Nigel Farage MEP 07802-597692
Mark Croucher, UKIP Press Officer, 012322-278878 or 07960-584161
Siim Kallas (Estonia)
Vice-President; Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud
Age: 56
Kallas was a member of the Soviet Communist Party, when Estonia was
part of the USSR, from 1972 to 1990. Indeed, for more than twenty-five
years, he was an apparatchik ' eventually quite a high-ranking one,
within the Soviet machine. When he finally ceased to be a Party
member, it was two whole years after the first independence
demonstrations in the Baltics and the Soviet system was falling apart.
During his first European Parliament hearing at the start of his
initial six-month commission term last spring, Mr Kallas was expected
to receive a tough grilling on his communist past, but did not receive
one question on the issue. Here then is his interesting career
history.
Having risen through the Estonian Soviet Finance Ministry, he became
Director of the Central Board of Savings, before an ostensible change
of career saw him appointed Deputy Editor of a newspaper called Rahva
Hääl in 1986. What his cv omits to mention is that this was the
official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. As
John Laughland said in the Mail on Sunday on 3 October 2004, "only
very senior Communists would get such powerful jobs." After a spell
'overseeing' the trade unions, he survived the fall of communism and,
reinventing himself as an ardent free marketeer, engineered a soft
landing back into the world of finance, as the first President of the
new Bank of Estonia.
Kallas is an enthusiast for the single currency who, during his Bank
Presidency in 1992, established the Estonian Kroon and pegged it to
the Deutschmark, but there is more to worry about in this story than
plain europhilia. In accordance with a signed agreement with Moscow,
all the old cash roubles were to be collected and returned to the
Central Bank of Russia. After eighteen months, there was no sign of
the money in either bank. Mounting evidence compelled Kallas and the
Estonian Prime Minister, Mart Laar, to admit the roubles had been sold
on to a third party to add more money to the Estonian Treasury, but
they would not reveal the identity of the buyer. A further year after,
the money was transferred back to the Bank of Estonia. Speculation was
rife that its interim resting place was Chechnya. Kallas was forced to
appear as a witness in court in 1996 over the "rouble hustle" but
nothing was ever conclusively proved beyond the undoubted fact that
something shady had gone on.
But this wasn't Kallas' only trip to court regarding a financial
scandal and next time he was in the dock. In 1993, the Bank of Estonia
secretly transferred US $10million to a Swiss account as part of a
dubious contract in which the Bank was supposed to receive highly
improbable dividends from the oil trade. As the beneficiaries of the
$10 million did not bear any liabilities, Estonia lost all the money.
Details of this scandal only seeped out three years later, and it took
a further four years to put Mr Kallas in the dock, by which time he
had long since left the Bank to found his own political party and had
now become Minister of Finance. He was acquitted of abuse and fraud,
thanks in no small part to the fact that his lawyer was a partner in
the law firm of the then Justice Minister, who was a member of the
party which Kallas had founded. However, even this couldn't prevent
Kallas from being found guilty of providing false information during
the trials. He carried on as Finance Minister regardless until 2002,
that is, when he became Prime Minister.
Despite all this, Kallas incredibly has been appointed to the
anti-fraud portfolio. With considerable cheek, he told the EP at his
autumn hearing that future whistleblowing cases "must be handled as
quickly as possible" under his term of office , this from the man who
evaded justice for seven years over the "Ten Million Dollar Affair."
He told MEPs he wanted to exploit internal audit procedures better,
"as a confidential opportunity to freely discuss how things can be
done better." From the mouth of an old apparatchik, this somehow
sounds rather unsavoury. In a further echo of his totalitarian past,
he told the hearing that "security at the Commission must be
dramatically improved. We must tackle.... unfriendly intelligence
against the Commission."
With awful irony, as the Parliament was listening to all this from a
man convicted of falsifying information during a trial, his
predecessor as anti-fraud commissioner, Neil Kinnock, in a spiteful
eleventh hour act, was sacking whistleblower Marta Andreasen for
alleged "unsubstantiated statements."
Little wonder that Kallas can now afford to show a Soviet disdain for
democracy. He believes the EU should not wait until the Constitution
is ratified to begin implementing its components. "The Commission
should already build on the political commitment to greater
integration expressed by member states", he replied, when asked which
parts of the Constitution he intended to implement before
ratification.
Text of UKIP Press Release issued 19 November 2004
Sack Barrot says UKIP, as Barroso admits ignorance. European
Commission Vice-President Jacques Barrot should be fired immediately
following the admission today at a press conference by staff of
Commission President Juan Manuel Barroso that he knew nothing about M.
Barrot's embezzlement conviction until it was revealed in the European
Parliament by UKIP MEP Nigel Farage.
UKIP said it was clear that both the Commission and the Parliament
were hoodwinked into accepting M. Barrot, and that, having withheld
the information, M.Barrot should be fired immediately.
Mr Farage said, "Only yesterday, Mr Barroso accepted in principle that
he should fire Commissioners who had lost the confidence of the
European Parliament. He now has an ideal opportunity to prove he is a
man of his word by doing just that to M. Barrot.
"M. Barrot chose not to make either the Commission President or the
Parliament aware that he had a conviction for embezzlement. It is
inconceivable that he simply 'forgot to mention it', and he should be
sacked immediately in order to regain what little public confidence
the Commission had in the first place."
ENDS
Note: European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso admitted at
a press conference this morning that he was not previously aware of
the conviction for embezzlement of Commission Vice-President Jacques
Barrot before yesterday's parliamentary session in Strasbourg.