More trouble for Europol
The European police organisation is ineffective
The European police organisation Europol is facing hard times. A few weeks ago, the Europol Head Quarter in The Hague was raided by a special Dutch police team following the arrest of a French official on the accusation of forgery. But new trouble is underway: confidential documents of the Dutch police show that Europol is a disfunctioning organisation.
The Dutch Centrale Recherche Informatiedienst CRI (central investigative agency) plays a central role in the information exchange through the Europol-channels. Information requests from the Europol liaison officers to the Dutch police forces are handled and distributed by the CRI. Information requests from the Dutch police to the Europol liaison officers are also running through the CRI. Confidential documents of the CRI are sketching an alarming picture of the functioning of Europol. Europol seems to be mostly an upgraded serving-hatch for vehicle registration plates and telephone numbers, but the exchanged information has little reliability. The analytical projects, which were supposed to be the state-horse of Europol, have a terrible lack of success. A humbly result for the organisation with a budget of 35 million Euro.
According to the CRI, information requests from Europol to the Dutch police were poorly formulated. The CRI was for example 'overwhelmed' with long lists of names in the context of human trafficking cases, without any clarity whether this were names of victims of trafficking, or suspected traffickers. Member States of Europol also violated the rules governing information exchange by Europol. Information exchange is only allowed if there is a concrete suspicion of organised crime involving two ore more Member States. In a lot of information requests concerning cases of drugs trafficking, car theft and money laundering, these requirements were lacking. 'The experience shows that several Member States frequently violate the rules,' the CRI states.
The CRI further points at the fact that most information requests are of a very primitive nature. 85% of the information requests in 1999 belonged to the so-called category one: simple questions about registration plates or telephone numbers. More complicated information requests of category two, which need analytical assistance of Europol, only counted for 10%. For information requests of category three (analytical support and co-ordination of cross border investigations), a humbly 5% remained. The figures of 2000 show an even worse result: information requests of category one amount 92%, category three only 2%.
Remarks of the director of Europol Jürgen Storbeck in the official Europol annual report 1999, that there is 'an increase in high quality results', are met by scepticism at the CRI. Europol points at five cases in 1999 where Europol played an important role. But according to the CRI, in the most of these cases only two Member States exchanged information. 'According to our view, these results would also be achieved without the existence of Europol,' the CRI concludes.
The CRI openly doubts the usefulness of Europol. It points at two big Europol analytical projects in 1999, who failed totally. In the case of the 'Cocaphone' Analytical Working File, national police teams should transfer known telephone numbers of suspected drugs criminals from South America to Europol. But most national teams, including the Dutch, didn't give the information and the project failed. Another Analytical Working File, the so-called 'Courier' Project, should be filled with data of arrested drugs traffickers, to get grip on the big bosses. But this project also failed because of lack of co-operation of the national police teams.
The CRI advises the Dutch police to think first, before putting time and energy in the Europol co-operation. 'If there is in Holland no clear interest or no clear reason to cooperate in an Europol-project, and no one wants or can give the wanted information, the CRI is of the opinion that we should not participate in these projects,' the Dutch investigative unit states in their confidential report of 1999.
The bad relationship between the CRI and Europol is a terrible embarrassment to the Dutch Ministry of Justice. Directors of Europol openly complain about the lack of co-operation from the Dutch. Dutch police turns down requests from Europol to give information or to co-operate in investigative projects. Embarrassing, because the Netherlands is the host of the Europol HQ. Last month the Dutch Ministry of Justice organised a high level meeting between high ranking officials of Europol and the CRI to smoothen the relationship. 'We are not the only Member State that have problems with Europol,' a spokesman for the departments tells. 'All Member States have to get familiar with the existence of Europol.'
He admits the relationship is troubled. 'Police corps have to search for all kind of data and send it to Europol. But the analyses coming from Europol have little use for our police. If this happen a couple of times, the next request for information is turned down. Than you have a vicious circle.' The spokesman admits there is not a single case in Holland where the help of Europol resulted in a crack down on organised crime. He hopes however that the high level meeting has ended the problems. The CRI has promised to give Europol all the information they need. Europol has promised to make better analyses, with the help of national experts.
The fraud scandal and the criticism of the CRI come at a bad time for Europol. Europol is expecting to get new powers in the near future. Many Dutch politicians are reluctant to give Europol new powers as long as the organisation is disfunctioning. But they don't say it in public because they are afraid the Netherlands will get political isolated in Europe. 'Of course Europol should do its work in a proper way,' Dutch Member of Parliament Gerrit Jan van Oven (Labour) says. 'But if other Member States are willing to give Europol new powers, and Europol it self says it can handle new tasks, it would be discouraging if Dutch Parliament blocked this. We need a cross border police in Europe.'
Sensus up date
The European Council of Justice and Home Affairs, which is political responsible for Europol, stated last week it will open an investigation in the Europol fraud scandal and the accusations that Europol is using stolen technology from Polygenesys. In this so called Sensus-scandal, a German officer of the intelligence service operated under a phoney name in a network of language development companies belonging to the Belgian company Lernhout & Hauspie. With the Lernhout & Hauspie construction, European police and intelligence services were trying to develop language tools to communicate in different languages and language tools that were able to scan and analyse foreign intercepted communication. Companies related to Lernhout & Hauspie worked in the Sensus-project that was financed by the European Commission. Europol is one of the beneficiaries of the Sensus project.
An internal document of Europol ('EC sponsored Research Projects', File number 2634-05, 8 October 1999), that outlines Europol's involvement with the EC sponsored research projects Aventinus and Sensus, is hilarious to read. Europol cannot afford to carry out pure research or to develop new technologies, the document states. But Europol can influence the direction being taken by those who can, especially within industry. 'An added bonus is that it is very cheap, since it capitalises on expenditure by others,' Europol says in the document. 'Europol pays nothing for its participation in the projects nor does it pay for the work done by the various partners (industrial, academic and police).' It seems now these words have to be taken very literally!
Europol is already participating in a follow-on to Sensus (which ended in September 2000). The new project is called Maximator: MAXIMisation of Advanced Technologies in Operative Retrieval. The project deals with 'the challenge of working with data, and keeping them up to date, even though they may be stored in a variety of different formats, databases and languages'. The project is sponsored under the Fifth Framework of the European Commission.