MEP's expenses

Tim Worstall points us to a summary of the EU auditor's report into MEP's expenses. This has been viewed in camera by a few people, but it's the first time any info beyond rumours of malfeasance have made it into the public arena. The rumours turn out to have been right.

The auditor has focused on payments to MEPs' staff.

[T]here is often no proportionality between the tasks performed and the remuneration received by a parliamentary assistant.

The audit report gives a number of examples to what situations this leads:
1. Payment of full allowance to a service provider with only one accredited assistant (1 case),
2. Payment of full allowance to a service provider with no accredited assistants (2 cases),
3. Payment of allowance to a company with no activity shown in annual accounts (1 case),
4. Payment of allowance to service provider with irrelevant activities (2 cases).

In the first case the service provider's area of business was the provision of child care. In the second case, the business appeared to be the trading of wood.

We can be quite sure that the beneficiaries of all this activity are the MEPs' friends and family. How so? Because they have said there's nothing they can do about it:

The Parliament Administration said in reply to the auditor that retroactive correction and clarification was not possible as a legal basis was lacking in the rules.

And there's more: the auditor has also looked at redundancy handouts to assistants of MEPs who were not re-elected. Of his sample of 42:

• Ten of these payments were made in breach of the PEAM rules as they continued to be under contract of an MEP who was still in office.
• One assistant received during the lay-off period of 3 months an accumulated monthly salary of [EUR]8,890. He accumulated lay-off payments from 5 MEPs, continuing payments from 3 re-elected MEPs and payments from 4 newly elected MEPs, thus receiving at the same time part-time payments from 12 (former) MEPs during three months.
• In two other cases the MEPs raised the salary oftwo assistants with 71% and 117% duringthe lay-off period, in order to exhaust the balance available.
  

The sheer corruption of the political class is almost unimaginable. Labour, Conservative, LibDem. You can see why they keep voting for "ever-closer union" - it's the opportunity it gives them for "ever-greater graft".

The original report is here.

Update:

If you think I'm wrong about this, MEPs have voted not to publish their expenses.