Person subject to judicial investigations by the Tunisian authorities for complicity in the misappropriation of Tunisian public monies by a public office-holder, complicity in the misuse of office by a public office-holder (ex-President Ben Ali) to procure an unjustified advantage for a third party and to cause a loss to the administration, exerting wrongful influence over a public office-holder ex-President Ben Ali with a view to obtaining directly or indirectly an advantage for another person, and for complicity in the offence of the receipt by a public official of public funds which he knew were not due, and used for the personal bene ...[+++]fit of himself or members of his family.

Ministers and senior officials from the 10 acceding countries today met Vice-President Neil Kinnock of the European Commission in Brussels in a day-long conference on administrative reform and the measures being put in place to recruit new European Union civil servants from the acceding states.

The European Commission has presented proposals for two programmes, "Fiscalis 2007" and "Customs 2007", to help Member States work more closely together against tax and customs fraud, through improved electronic systems for information exchange between national administrations, co-operation in investigations, training seminars for customs and tax officials and experts and the exchanges of officials between national administrations.

Senior civil servants from the public administrations of 28 European countries have endorsed recommendations for the development of on-line government services.

In the light of this, the Commission has decided to implement a pilot scheme for exchanges of offices from the various national customs authorities, with the following aims in mind: (a) to prepare the Member States' customs officials for the implications of the internal market, in particular as regards the elimination of border checks and a change of focus towards supervision of the Community's external borders in the interests of improving the efficiency of measures to prevent and eliminate fraud; (b) providing the greatest possible number of customs officials with supplementary, specially adapted professional training; (c) deriving the maximum possible advantage from the know-how of customs services in the Community through greater mobi ...[+++]lity of customs personnel, thus improving the management of the customs union; (d) stimulating intensive and on-going cooperation at all levels of the relevant administrations in order to prepare them to work together in the context of the internal market.

Matthaeus, which is named after the patron saint of customs officers, is a pilot scheme for arranging exchanges of officials between customs administrations in different Member States and is designed to: (a) prepare national customs officials for the single European market, with special reference to the elimination of border checks and the shifting of controls to the Community's external frontiers, in the interests of improving the effectiveness of measures to prevent and combat fraud; - 2 - (b) provide as many customs officials as possible with additional, specially adapted training; (c) exploit the expertise of national customs admin ...[+++]istrations thanks to increased mobility for customs personnel, thereby improving management of the Customs Union; (d) stimulate intensive, on-going cooperation at all levels within the customs administrations to prepare them for working together within the single European market.