“Don’t sleep easy!” – this is the message of the chief prosecutor of Europe, Laura Codruca Kovesi, to the criminal organizations that are increasingly targeting EU money. As drug traffickers begin to siphon money from the EU, Europe’s chief prosecutor wants to fight back. The head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office wants to get additional powers and funds to fight fraudsters, she writes politicalreports News.ro.

Two years after she started working as the first prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), Laura Kodruza Kevesi notes “the reorientation of the mafia, which turns its attention to EU subsidies and VAT fraud”.

Maybe the drug trade makes Netflix dramas more exciting, but these EU-funded financial crimes can be extremely lucrative, writes Politico.

• “Europe loses more than 50 billion euros a year just because of this type of crime,” Kevesi said in an interview with a European newspaper from his office in Luxembourg.

Kevesi, who heads a team of 135 prosecutors conducting massive open cross-border investigations into crimes involving the EU budget, echoed a recent warning by Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, of “continental denial of the real level of financial fraud and what it means for our security “.

One of the main targets is the Recovery and Resilience Facility, created after the Covid pandemic to distribute huge sums of money to help countries get back on their feet. Currently, the EPPO is investigating hundreds of such cases.

• “Whenever there is organized crime, such as a large market for buying drugs, there is widespread corruption and there is no such thing as a clean country,” Kevesi said.

Kovesi could press charges against those found guilty of evading Russian sanctions

But pressure is mounting on the EPPO in this crucial election year, and as Kiovesi’s elite team of prosecutors will include new members from Poland, a country now ruled by pro-EU Donald Tusk after years of a nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government. party – and from Sweden, which has announced that it is in the process of joining. Only Hungary is not part of the EPPO’s efforts, Politico notes.

Establishing an office in Poland could also help the EPPO in another area: the investigation of allegations against Russian sanctions evaders.

France and Germany have pushed for action against sanctions violators, and Kevesi is waiting for the European executive and members of the European Parliament to change their duties before he can start working on that as well.

• “I believe that the EPPO is the best tool for Europe to get involved in the fight against this type of crime,” Kevesi said. But she warns that the EPPO’s budget will have to keep pace with the expansion of its role. “The whole architecture created to protect EU money needs to be reformed a bit,” she says.

European FBI?

While the EPPO is trying to fight corruption, there is another EU agency with similar powers, the anti-fraud agency OLAF. And while OLAF does not say to what extent its financial recommendations have led to the recovery of EU funds, the EPPO says it has helped recover billions of euros.

• “We can change the game,” said Kevesi, also noting that the EPPO and OLAF work well together.

But the European diplomat questions the coexistence of the two bodies, which are aimed at combating the misuse of EU funds.

• “While the EPPO may genuinely believe that it can justify a larger budget that will enable it to carry out its work, it should also be borne in mind that it probably equally believes that OLAF’s larger budget does not necessarily reflect its actual performance on the ground,” said the diplomat on condition of anonymity

Kevesi says the extra funding would help her build an elite group of financial investigators across the bloc.

EPPO Academy

These plans are slowly taking shape. In May, the first “EPPO Academy” will start with the help of Italy’s Guardia di Finanza, a law enforcement agency that reports to the Ministry of Finance, not the Ministry of Defense. A small number of investigators from across Europe will attend training courses with the idea of ​​creating a community of agents to share information on cross-border cases.

But this does not mean that Kevesi wants to revive the old federalist dream of creating a European FBI, notes Politico.

• “I appreciate what the FBI is doing, but we are Europeans and in Europe we have more than enough tools and means to protect our citizens,” she said.

Obstacles of the EPPO after two years of operation

However, cooperation at the EU level has not yet been proven. After two years of operation, some of the EPPO’s investigations are running into obstacles, such as in Greece, where Kevesi’s team worked on the alleged embezzlement of EU funds after last year’s train crash that killed 57 people.

• “There is a constitutional provision that says only the national parliament has the power to investigate and prosecute members or former members of the Greek government,” explained Kiovesi, adding that the European Commission had been informed of the pressure on Greece to update the laws.

But in a growing number of countries, there is little hope that officials will change the law to make it easier for European prosecutors to prosecute criminals (and politicians). A recently published study commissioned by the European Commission highlighted the fact that many Member States hinder the effectiveness of EPPOs in their jurisdictions in terms of independence or compliance with the law. For example, Slovakia has implemented an accelerated procedure for reforming the Criminal Code and has begun liquidating the Special Prosecutor’s Office, which handles corruption cases, including officials from the ruling Smer party led by Prime Minister Robert Fico.

• “We are very concerned about this,” Kevesi said, adding that he had sent a letter to the European Commission to share his concerns.
• “We had the same reaction when it came to Slovenia, where the government wanted to reduce the sanctions for fraud cases and where many cases would be closed, which is a de facto amnesty,” Kovesi noted.

The EPPO is also in a delicate position when it comes to investigating the European Commission itself. In 2022, the EPPO opened a vaccine procurement case following hundreds of complaints from citizens about the Pfizergate scandal (the controversy surrounding Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and what was said in text messages she allegedly exchanged with by Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Burla, before the EU signed the company’s biggest Covid vaccine contract).

But don’t worry, says Kevesi, who promises that if his team is under pressure, “anyway you will know because it will be made public.”