Anti-fraud policies, measures and results - Revenue

AuthorEuropean Anti-Fraud Office (European Commission)
Pages28-34
28
th Annual Report on the Protection of the European Union’s financial interests — Fight against fraud 
. Anti-fraud policies, measures
and results — Revenue
.. EU institutions’ anti-fraud measures — revenue
... Mutual administrative assistance
.... Anti-Frau d Information System ( AFIS)
AFIS (32) is an umbr ella term for a set of a nti-fraud IT ap plications o perated by the
European Com mission (OLAF ) which creat e contact s with the com petent aut horities in
the Member Sta tes, ensuring t imely and secu re exchange of fr aud-relate d information
between nati onal and EU competent ad ministrations. The AF IS Portal is a single and com -
mon infrastr ucture for the delivery of t he below-mentioned ser vices to nearly 8 800 reg -
istered end- users in more th an 1 900 com petent ser vices from Memb er States, par tner
third countr ies, international organisa tions, Commissio n depart ments and ot her EU insti-
tutions. T he AFIS project encompa sses two major areas: (i) mutual a ssistance in customs
matters; an d (ii) irregularities manage ment (covering several expendit ure sectors).
AFIS suppor ts mutual assistance in c ustoms matt ers with the s ecure real-ti me informa-
tion exchang e system VOCU (Virtu al Operations Coordinatio n Unit) used for joint customs
operations, se cure web mail (A FIS-Mail), dat abases like t he CIS+ (Custom s Information
System) and FIDE (C ustoms Investigation File s Identif‌ication Data base) and analysis tools
like A-TIS (Anti-Fr aud Transit Information System).
The Irregul arity Management Sys tem (IMS) is a secure elect ronic tool which helps Me mber
States in their o bligation to report irreg ularities detected in ag ricultural, struc tural, cohe-
sion and f‌isherie s funds, the A sylum, Migrat ion and Integ ration Fund (A MIF), the i nstru-
ment for f‌inancia l support for po lice cooperati on, preventin g and combati ng crime, and
crisis manageme nt (ISF) and th e Fund for Europea n Aid to the Mos t Deprived (FE AD) as
well as pre-acc ession aid. It supports t he management and analysis of ir regularities.
.... Joint customs operations ( JCOs)
In addition to it s investigations on cases of r evenue fraud, O LAF coord inates large -scale
JCOs involving EU a nd internatio nal operatio nal partn ers. JCOs are t argeted ac tions of
limited durat ion that aim to combat fraud a nd the smuggling of sensit ive goods in specif‌ic
areas at risk and /or on identif‌ied trade rou tes.
In 2018, OLAF p rovided support in 5 JCOs . The VOCU module of the AF IS was used for the
secure excha nge of information in four of the se JCOs. In addition to t he necessary supp ort
for the relevant c ountries to conduct coor dinated actions by means of OL AF’s permanent
technical in frastructure, IT an d communications tools, O LAF also provides st rategic anal-
ysis, administra tive and f‌inancial suppor t.
These operat ions: (i) help to improve the ef‌fec tiveness of cus toms service s in conducting
targeted c hecks at European level; (ii) id entify where the risks lie o n specif‌ic trade routes ;
(iii) protect th e public and leg itimate busine sses by prevent ing illegal prod ucts from e n-
tering the EU ; and (iv) safeguard EU public f‌ina nces.
Figure 4 presen ts a summary of these oper ations.
() Its legal basis is Re gulation /  as amended by Re gulation  /.

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