A European Union court has rejected a claim for damages from a journalist who says he has been persecuted by the EU anti-fraud office, Olaf.
Hans-Martin Tillack was arrested by Belgian police and his files were seized after he exposed wrongdoing at the EU statistics agency, Eurostat.
He claimed damages from the European Commission, arguing that Olaf had triggered the Belgian police action.
But the court said there was no "causal link" between Olaf and his arrest.
Bribery allegation
Mr Tillack wrote two articles for Stern magazine in 2002 on alleged fraud at Eurostat, where large amounts of money were siphoned off into secret bank accounts.
It passed information to the authorities in Belgium and Germany, which led to Mr Tillack's arrest.
However, the EU's Court of First Instance ruled there was "not a sufficiently direct causal link between the forwarding of the information by Olaf to the Belgian judicial authorities and the damage claimed".
Mr Tillack denied paying for the Olaf memo, and accused Olaf of making the bribery allegation on the basis of rumour.
He took the case to the European Ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros, who agreed that Olaf had made the allegation without a factual basis, and said this constituted a case of maladministration.
