 Good afternoon from the Institute. This is Nora Owen chairing this session, and I welcome all our viewers today to this very special debate. And we're today going to be addressed by Ville Italia. Italy, I hope that I got that right who's the director general of Olaf the European anti fraud agency. He will speak for about 15 minutes or so, and then there will be some time for questions. And it's on the record the meeting and the questions are on the record, and Mr Italia will speak. And then you can send in your questions you can do that whilst he's actually speaking as well, using the Q&A function on the zoom which many of you will be familiar with. And this is, as I say, head of Olaf and Ville is a lawyer by training. He also was an acting police commissioner and a town court prosecutor. He was a member of the Finnish Parliament from 1995 and from 2000 2003. He was appointed as the country's interior minister. In 2004 he represented the Southwest Finland in the European Parliament by a coincidence coincided with my own sister Mary Bernati for a couple of years. And then she he joined the European Court of Auditors in 2012. He was appointed to his current role as director general of the European anti fraud office known as Olaf in 2018. And before we started we had a little chat and Ville reminded me that of course Olaf would be more familiar to a lot of you because that's the name of the snowman in frozen. And also it's the name of a beer in Finland, but it is not that what we're talking about today we're talking about the European anti fraud agency many of you will be familiar with this Olaf because it is the agency that makes sure that EU members are not in any way and using corruption to get funds. And I know that Ville will explain that to us so I'm going to open the floor to you now Ville. When you're finished, I will bring in the question so thank you very much and you're warmly welcome to Ireland's day. Thank you Nora, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. It's an honor to follow in the virtual footsteps of previous speakers, such as your own president, Michael D begins. I'm not the first Finn that has addressed you. I see that Paavo Liponen, former prime minister of Finland, visited you 20 years ago. I served as a part of Mr Liponen's government as interim minister from 2000 to 2003. It was a better deal because he managed to meet you in the great sitting of Dublin, but I'm here at the other end of the internet connection. However, I look forward to talking with you today about the work that the EU's anti fraud office, otherwise known as Olaf does. And how we are protecting the EU's growth and the citizens money. So what does Olaf do? Protecting the EU's budget from fraud is the core business of Olaf. We detect and investigate the reports of misappropriations of EU's funds. No matter where it goes, no matter who carries it out. Simply put, where even when it goes, Olaf goes. Whether we are investigating an Italian gang targeting EU agricultural funds in Romania or protecting EU aid meant for refugees in Syria. We'll be there. We have a truly global reach and we follow EU money wherever it goes. That often means our investigations take place outside the EU. For example, in 2020, we concluded many cases related to EU funding in a number of non EU countries, including Bangladesh, Iraq, Syria, South Africa and Turkey. Once we have concluded our investigations, we recommended how much money should be recovered. And if a judicial, administrative or disciplinary follow up by member states and EU authorities is needed. Since our funding in 1999, Olaf has successfully concluded thousands of cases, which led to the recovery of hundreds of millions of stolen EU funds. The roles in the protection of EU's financial interests also involves fraud prevention. By identifying problems related to the EU financial interests at the early stage, all of fraud prevention and analysis work helps detect deficiencies in the member state systems to manage and protect EU taxpayers money. This can be used to alert member states when problematic patterns emerge. Olaf not only protects EU revenue, but protects citizens. For instance, as e-commerce becomes more popular, even more millions of parcels arrive in the EU. Directive controls can be very challenging for national authorities. It can lead counterfeit, low quality and dangerous goods such as medicines, food and toys entering the EU's internal market. I will share one such relevant examples with you later, which shows how dangerous this kind of fraud can be. Our remit extends to investigating alleged corruption by staff of EU institutions. We also take the lead in developing anti-fraud legislation and policies for the EU. However, it is important to state that Olaf does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. In order to achieve a positive outcome, we depend on high quality and comprehensive information. This means our excellent officers and analysts work closely with the partners across the globe. We work with national authorities, custom agencies, EU institutions, other agencies and organizations, such as Europol and Eurotrast. This cooperation underpins the success of Olaf. As I just highlighted, the main goal of Olaf is to protect the EU budget and in so doing citizens' money. The EU's response to the COVID-19 crisis and the unprecedented amounts of EU investment needed for our recovery mean, this task is now more important than ever. This is why Olaf has been worked closely with the European Commission, Member States and our partner in the EU anti-fraud landscape, Europol, Eurotrast, as well as the European Public Prosecutor Office, to ensure the highest levels of protection of the EU budget and the recovery and resilience facility, or RRF. The RRF makes over 700 billion euro available to Member States across the EU. This funding supports reforms and investments in each country. It helps countries recover from the COVID pandemic and will help fulfill the Commission's green and digital transitions. Fortunately, in our experience, when this amount of money appears as to frosters and criminals intent on filling their pockets, Olaf has been closely involved since the adoption of the RRF to the screening of each national plans. This gives Olaf a unique sense of the challenges ahead, especially regarding audit and control at the national level. We prepared specific tailored advice to each Member State on how best to guard against fraud. It was a complex operation for Olaf, but it will prove vital because the management and the control systems of each Member States are the first line of defence to the EU's financial interest. Make no mistake, national authorities of Member States are on the frontline here. They are the ones who make sure the financial support goes where it should, that the targets in the national plans are met and that there are no irregularities or fraud. Olaf will continue to support national authorities in this task. We have the expertise, will and ready to help. We are already in contact with the national bodies that control and manage RRF funds. It is important that we do so because we have found that prevention and early detections are crucial. Working together, we will stand more of a chance to make sure that the money goes where it is intended. Olaf will do all we can to help our partners in the Member States and across the EU to make this happen. And it is our partners. I would like to talk about in the next part of my speech. The new addition to the EU anti-fraud architecture, the European Public Prosecution Office. In June last year, HEPA became operational. It was the missing pillar in the EU anti-fraud architecture. Based in Luxembourg, it can prosecute fraudsters. Unlike Olaf, HEPA only operates in 22 EU Member States. Olaf will continue to carry out its mandate in the non-participating Member States, including Ireland, as it always has done. The creation of HEPA was supported by Olaf for years and we welcomed its start of operation in June 2021. The administrative powers of Olaf and the prosecution powers of HEPA allows for comprehensive protection of the financial interests and conviction of fraudsters. Olaf and HEPA with Europol and Eurotjust make a strong team. Olaf has intensified its work with those bodies in recent years and have recently created a unit dedicated to developing operational cooperation. I firmly believe that closer cooperation brings better results, which is what citizens expect. With HEPA, we have worked on several investigations and already have seen results. The fact that this partnership has developed quickly and during lockdown is very positive and I'm confident that Olaf and HEPA cooperation will be stronger with each year. I want to give you an example of the work we do at Olaf. Much of the work that we do is confidential, so I cannot talk about specific cases. But one story I want to talk about features Ireland and I would like to share it with you. And like many stories, it started in Denmark. In August 2020, Danish authorities seized 6000 litres of counterfeit and extremely hazardous Turkish hand sanitizers. The liquid contained densurously high levels of methanol, which if used could cause headaches, blarred vision, nausea, vomiting and loss of coordination. On this information, Olaf has to act. Quickly, our experts identified a suspicious shipment of the hand sanitizer heading for Ireland. We alerted the Irish Revenue Commissioners who stopped the suspicious cargo at the port of Dublin. The test showed that the hand sanitizers contained densurously high levels of methanol. The cargo was impounded and kept away from public use. The second such shipment to Dublin was also seized. Olaf provided more information and the Irish authorities discovered more contaminated sanitizers which had already arrived. These dangerous items were due to be distributed to schools, administrations and other public services across Ireland. Thankfully, our information helped to limit the use of those hand sanitizers. Another example of our work linked to the COVID-19 pandemic is our warnings issued to governments and partners across the world against fake offers to COVID vaccines. These offers represent almost 1.2 billion vaccine doses for a total asking price of over 16.4 billion euro. Those examples are just a snapshot of the work we do here at Olaf. The pandemic has increased our workload and changed the way in which we work. I'm happy in how we have reacted to the situation. However, we will not rest and are always ready to reach out and work with others to ensure the positive outcome. I sometimes think that what we do here in Olaf comes down to an issue of fairness. To make sure that the EU money which is intended to help EU citizens actually has a change to do so. We aim to keep it out of the hands of criminals who do not care about the good of society. As we hopefully emerge from the COVID pandemic, Olaf will be there to make sure that the money that is needed to help rebuild that society has a chance to do so. I thank you for your time and hope I have given you an insight of the work we do at the Olaf.