Tillack, Hans-Martin (1961- )
Tillack, Hans-Martin (1961 - )
German journalist working for the weekly “Stern”. He was revealing the Eurostat-scandal in his weekly magazine where he wrote about corruption in the European Commission.
On the morning of 19 March 2004, his home and office in Brussels were raided by Belgian police. Tillack himself was detained during ten hours. The Police confiscated his computers, mobile phones and 17 boxes of documents. They returned the laptops and phones after having made electrronic copies.
The initiative to raid him came from OLAF who wanted to find his sources inside OLAF. They denied any involvement, but the Ombudsman later criticized OLAF Chief Franz-Hermann Brüner for providing wrong and misleading information. about the affair.
It was the first and only known example where the Ombudsman criticized an institution for such a conduct with no consequences for the responsible.
In 2008 the kingdom of Belgium lost a court case against Tillack before the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg and was forced to pay him 40,000 € in compensation. He had previously run a court case in the EU Court - but lost.
In 2007, the Belgian authorities finally returned to him the nearly 1000 pages, which they had kept until then. Although OLAF had over years denied it the anti-fraud office had sought – and partially received - access to Tillack’s documents while they were in the hands of the Belgian police. Nevertheless, the authorities did never manage to disclose the sources of the journalist inside OLAF.
Tillack was awarded with the Frode Jakobsen Prize for personal courage.
