Transcript Review of EPOC III

Paris Project Meeting January 2012
Item – Statistics Objective 5
B. Proia
With financial support from Criminal Justice Programme 2008
European Commission – Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security
Contents
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Executive summary
Expectations of the Objective
Methodological approach
Key to success
Progress of the Objective
Findings and comments (1) (2)
Changes in direction
Summaries of discussions
Summaries of comments
Conclusions
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Executive summary
• Original Objective scenario
Analyse the connection between organised crime and corruption
through the exchange of statistics between the Italian Desk at
Eurojust and the Italian Anticorruption and Transparency Service
• Topics to be developed
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identify statistical analysis of interest regarding the corruption
phenomenon that the Italian Desk at Eurojust and the Italian
Anticorruption Authority could generate on a regular basis
identify and develop software solutions within EPOC on how to
exchange statistics of interest
experiment with software solutions on how to exchange statistics of
interest
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Expectations of the Objective
• Value of the report
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assess the evolution of the phenomenon
identify areas and sectors most at risk
reveal links between criminal organizations
implement policies for the information and prevention
initiate specific cooperation
• Type of report
quantitative and qualitative reports on corruption cases generated on the
basis of a general judicial information with reference to a certain period of
time
information not requested: sensitive information, individual cases under
investigation
• Perspectives
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extend the analysis involving other countries as a partner
extend the analysis to other crimes such as the fraud to the allocation of
community funds
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Methodological approach
• Adopt the operational model “Hub & Spoke”
a system in which Eurojust is the terminal (HUB) of the flow of data from
Partners (SPOKE). The S.A.eT. and the Italian Desk at Eurojust would
process the data to carry out statistics and to analyze the final data
• Select and analyse appropriate corruption indicators
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Crime indicator: specifies the offense against the Public Administration,
which is connected to corruption
Sector indicator: indicates what area of the Public Administration has been
involved
Time indicator: indicates the time interval covered by the data
Territorial indicator: indicates the geographical area of reference
• Carry out an experimental phase
consisting of the manual exchange of general information with a view to
provide sample reports
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Key to success
• Limitations
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the lack of homogeneous statistical data
the different legal and judicial organizations of reference countries
the different administrative structures at local level
• The key to overcoming these limitations has been
identified in:
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finding a language that can make the data homogeneous
standardizing the data through the adoption of a targeted Data
Dictionary in the EPOC environment
approach the subject in a structured way
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Progress of the Objective
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Two investigations have been carried out
1. The Italian National Desk has researched the number of instances
where corruption was part of or defined as the crime that had taken
place
The report was made under the following search criteria:
- crimes where the Italian National Desk at Eurojust have been
involved
- time frame for the last 5 years
- types of crime where corruption is indicated as the crime or as
being part of crime.
2. Investigation with partners has been done within the EPOC IV Data
Standards
In the Data Standard 8 data types have been identified with the
objective. The project partners were asked to assess whether in
their systems there was any extra overlap with these 8 data items
that had not been mapped yet in the standard
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Findings and comments (1)
• The investigation on cases involving corruption
genereted a report of first results containing 13 cases
• The results identified some limitations:
- the number of instances in the last five years is low and not
sufficient to warrant significant results
- not all information can be processed by Eurojust and is not available
- the number of instances of corruption internationally may be low
because the crime is hidden as part of other crimes, this results in
low visibility of corruption
- the indication of corruption is national rather than international
- the crime is committed locally
- the small number of cases is not sufficient to identify trends
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Findings and comments (2)
• The investigation within the EPOC IV Data Standard has
showed that 8 data types were identified with the
objective
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These data cover 3 categories
Contact details
Type of Crime
Specific S.A.eT. data items
Of the 8 data items identified inside the Data Standard
3 matched to the CMS and could be identified in a number of partner
systems, this related to part of a country impacted, description of the
events and date of occurrence
one reference only to the legal impact
no matches to specifc S.A.eT. items
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Changes in direction
• The results whilst interesting allowed no interesting
conclusions to be reached
• In order to find an alternative that might deliver the spirit
of the objective, the S.A.eT. proposed "Mapping and
analysis of corruption in Europe" with the purpose to:
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gather information from each project partner
conduct a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the phenomenon
of corruption in the Public Administration
have as a landmark in the area comprising the countries
participating in the project
use general information contained in the EPOC database
provide references for the implementation of prevention and
cooperation within Europe.
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Summaries of discussions
• Could the “Mapping and analysis of the phenomenon of
corruption” in general deliver the spirit of the objective?
• Is it possible to gather the necessary information from
partners to carry out a different sort of analysis?
• Are there any objections to sharing in principle generic
data to gather a wide view of the phenomenon of
corruption?
• Is it possible to gather data for this objective outside of
the Eurojust legal basis?
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Summaries of comments
• Reporting of interest would focus more specifically on
detail rather than generic reporting
• General reporting is trend based and less interesting
than specific reporting on a case by case basis
• Interest is on providing deeper analysis on complex
operational cases
• An alternative to broaden the scope outside of Eurojust
to partners of the project shifts the focus to provide a
generic view coming from partners and not Eurojust
• Generic approaches are not the specific focus of juctice
organisations that focus on international cooperation at
the level of Eurojust
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Conclusions
• More generally there is a further limitation in the lack of a
homogeneous definition of the offence of corruption at
the level of Member States of the EC
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most do not have legislative definitions of corruption
some have special anti-corruption laws
corruption within the various public institutions (police, customs,
judiciary, and government administrations) can be very different
• Although the general conclusion has been that further
effort along the lines of a comparative analysis would not
lead to success, must be pointed out a positive aspect,
namely the fact that the highlighted limitations may be a
constructive starting point for any future development of
this project.
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Partners
Questions /
Discussion
Support from
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End - Paris Project Meeting January 2012
Item – Statistics Objective 5
B Proia –
With financial support from Criminal Justice Programme 2008
European Commission – Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security