The complainant, whose company was the subject of an investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), asked OLAF to grant public access to the case file and report from the investigation after the relevant national authorities had completed their follow-up activities. OLAF granted access to only parts of the report and refused access to the rest of the file. It invoked a few exceptions under the EU legislation on public access to documents, arguing in particular that disclosure of the investigation case file could reveal its methods and strategies and thus undermine the effectiveness of future investigations. In doing so, it applied a general presumption of non-disclosure, meaning that it refused to grant public access to the file without conducting an individual assessment of the documents.

The Ombudsman took the view that the general presumption of non-disclosure applies only to some documents contained in OLAF files, namely those containing internal and preliminary views. Based on an assessment of a sample of the documents from the file, the Ombudsman found that OLAF could nonetheless reasonably argue that the majority of them could not be disclosed based on the need to protect personal data and sensitive commercial information. As a result, she closed the case.

However, the Ombudsman suggested that, in dealing with future requests, OLAF should carry out an individual assessment of documents from its the investigation files when requests concern documents that are clearly not covered by the general presumption of non-disclosure as recognised in EU case-law. In case of broad requests for public access to the entire investigation file, OLAF should consider asking requesters to specify which documents they seek access to.