Richard Corbett (PSE). – Mr President, I want to draw Members’ attention to a set of pan-European scams which target small businesses. The best known of these is the ‘European City Guide’ from Spain, but there are others: ‘Construct Data’ in Austria, ‘Novachannel’ and ‘Intercable Verlag’ in Switzerland, ‘Deutsche Addressdienst’ and ‘TVV Verlag’ in Germany. They all mail deliberately deceptive documents to small businesses across Europe. These are disguised as free update forms, but hidden in the small print is a notice indicating that signature of the form will incur huge costs.

Recently a Swiss newspaper revealed that there is just one man – Meinolf Lüdenbach – behind most of these organisations. He also controls the debt companies that pursue victims once they have been duped into signing. His network amounts to a conspiracy to defraud small businesses in Europe.

These scams hop from country to country, taking advantage of our divergent legal systems to escape justice. I am therefore delighted that Commissioner Kyprianou has agreed to look into this matter and I would urge all colleagues who have examples of these in their constituencies – and there are many of you, I know – to write to him with information so that he can complete his dossier.
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