The European Parliament's budget control committee has demanded the release of a closely guarded report which has detailed abuse of expenses by MEPs.

Rules of parliament allow for the report, by the assembly's internal auditor, to remain available to only a small group of MEPs and senior officials, who are not allowed to share the information.

But officials who have seen the report are concerned about the way in which expense allowances for MEPs' support staff is being handled, and have called for the current expenses system to be changed, Dow Jones reported.

One UK LibDem MEP said: 'The most difficult thing to establish is whether what is described by our own auditors is fraud or whether it's simply a huge exercise in creative accounting which doesn't break the European Parliament's rules.'

He further provided examples of what he described as 'grossly unethical behaviour' – saying that in one case a parliamentarian claimed to have paid his assistant a Christmas bonus 19 times his salary, and in other instances money had been paid to what appeared to be fictitious service providers.

He said the European Parliament has 'set rules which they simply wouldn't tolerate in any public institution'.

OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud body, has received a copy of the report but there appears to be little additional effort to publish the report.

Parliamentary spokesman Jaume Duch Guillot said the audit did not reveal individual cases of fraud but added that a new central recruitment system would be in place to support MEPs after the 2009 elections.

In addition, salary disparities between MEPs of different countries will be eliminated and MEPs will no longer be allowed to claim expenses without proper receipts.

Further reading:

Pressure on MEPs over secret expenses report

Report uncovers MEP expenses abuse

Euro-MPs 'not accountable' over staff expenses