Gathering electronic evidence for administrative investigations – comparative study of law and practice

ended

With the ever-increasing digitalisation of almost every aspect of human activities any type of infringement – be it criminal or administrative – leaves digital traces, which may be crucial as evidence in punitive proceedings. Over the past years, the debate over access to electronic evidence gained prominence as regards access to data for criminal investigation. Notably absent from these debates and initiatives is administrative law enforcement. Yet, electronic evidence is no less crucial for punitive administrative proceedings. While, due to privacy limitation concerns, the access to electronic evidence will arguably not be as broad as for criminal investigations, it will be increasingly more difficult to miss the golden opportunity that access to evidence through service providers offers for effective investigations. Already non-content data offers insights, which may be essential to providing proof of misconduct. The need to access new types of evidence is well exemplified by the recently added possibility for OLAF to request bank account information. So far, OLAF has no specific provisions of cooperation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Yet, we may find it for other administrative proceedings, e.g., in financial supervision and the Market Abuse Regulation. The objective of this project is to fill this important gap by providing high-level comparative research on gathering electronic evidence for punitive administrative proceedings. ELEVADMIN will compare selected domains as to the legal framework and practice at EU and at the national level in selected EU Member States. The results will be thoroughly compared. The outcome of this study will allow us to formulate policy recommendations as to the extension of powers of OLAF as regards gathering electronic evidence from ISPs.