OREANDA-NEWS. On 14 June 2016, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) joined forces with the World Bank Integrity Vice Presidency (INT) to set up an Investigative Data Cross-Matching Platform (IDCP). An Arrangement to this effect was signed by Beatriz Sanz Redrado, OLAF's Director for Investigation Support, and Stephen Zimmermann, INT Director of Operations, marking a new step in the longstanding and successful cooperation between their partner institutions.

In an ever more globalised world, investigative offices need to work together to successfully fight fraud. “Fraudsters can easily move across borders and we need to be able to match their speed, by acting quickly and efficiently. This is why sharing information with our partners is essential. The IDCP will help us tackle fraud affecting development projects all over the world” noted Ms Sanz Redrado.

"Data is the whistleblower for the next decade," said Stephen Zimmermann, Director of Operations, World Bank Integrity Vice Presidency. "To achieve meaningful progress in the fight against corruption, we need to incentivise those who want to do the right thing, internationalise our efforts and continue to look for ways to innovate. Stepping up efforts to share and analyse data is a key step to our success."

The IDCP facilitates the exchange of case-related information between OLAF and INT in order for the two partners to be able to identify cases of double or multiple funding of development projects, as well as cases where the same persons or economic operators defraud their respective budgets. In order to achieve this, OLAF and INT will regularly insert investigative data into the IDCP system. The innovative feature of the IDCP is that the system will automatically identify "cross-matches" such as the name of the same economic operator or of the same persons in the OLAF and INT investigations and will notify the partners.

OLAF has received the authorisation of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) for its Investigation Data Cross-Checking Platform (IDCP). The IDCP is an innovative system which aims to further international cooperation in the fight against fraud by creating a database to support the exchange of investigative information. The database will contain a subset of data from investigative files of OLAF and its selected international partners. Taking full account of the recommendations of the EDPS, the system will automatically cross-reference newly uploaded information with data already in the system, looking for matches. Specific procedural arrangements concerning the functioning of the system will be signed by all the additional partners to the IDCP before they will be allowed to use the system.