The knowledge was not widespread, but people in the field certainly had suspicions and started getting an idea in the late 1980s, at the very latest. The EU con

The knowledge was not widespread, but people in the field certainly had suspicions and started getting an idea in the late 1980s, at the very latest. The EU conducted an investigation in 2000 and certainly knew what was going on pretty well when the final report [1] was presented in mid 2001. Probably not in too much detail but they certainly had an idea of the [possible] scale. [1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...