How much happier is it possible to make our anti-EU chums than this little story, just a few days after the EU’s damp squib birthday celebrations?

Mass dawn raids over EU ‘Mafia links’

More than 40 dawn raids were carried out in four countries yesterday by police investigating alleged Mafia involvement in European Union security and building contracts worth millions of euros…

The investigation involves suspected bribery of European civil servants, forming a criminal organisation, violating professional secrecy, breaches of public tender laws and forgery

Superb! Nice job, EU-type chaps! We already know that the Commission’s riddled with corruption and that even the EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF is, if not wilfully aiding corruption, then piss-poor at cleaning it up, but this takes the proverbial.

Further EU fraud reading:

– Wikipedia on whistleblower Paul van Buitenen (whose investigations led to the fall of the Santer Commission back in 1999)

– Wikipedia again on the slightly nutty Hans-Peter Martin MEP (who exposed the widespread fiddling of expenses by MEPs)

– The pathetic failure to even attempt to punish ex-Commissioner (and former French Prime Minister) Édith Cresson even after she was found guilty of abusing her position for personal gain (see Case C-432/04 at the European Court of Justice last year – and also the EU Law Blog on the same

– The abysmal treatment of the EU’s former chief accountant Marta Andreasen, who pointed out that the lack of double-entry bookkeeping in the EU institutions (a standard for accounting for centuries) left the place wide open to fraud (her figure of a potential 10,000 cases in 2002 alone, however, being just that: potential; she didn’t try to point to specific examples, just systemic failures that would allow for up to 10,000 cases of fraud a year), only to be suspended for “violating Articles 12 and 21 of staff regulations, failure to show sufficient loyalty and respect” – wonderfully adding to the eurosceptic arsenal of “the EU’s an authoritarian hellhole” missiles

– Politics.co.uk on EU budget fraud

– Marta Andreasen on “the EU’s culture of corruption”