This paper presents a formal approach for the specification and verification of UML diagrams against a set of structural properties. This work is part of a research project, aiming at building correct e-business processes. In this project, an e-business process is described using class and activity diagrams. The verification of structural properties gives a certain degree of confidence regarding the correctness of the related business  process. Our proposal is based on the formal approach promoted by the USE tool. This approach aims at validating a particular state of an object model against properties described in the OCL language. The contributions of this paper are: the introduction of a meta-model based on class diagram for each UML diagram to be verified, a set of rules for the translation of class, object and activity diagrams into USE specifications, and the specification of structural properties in the OCL language.