PIRAEUS, Greece — It’s not just Greece and Slovakia. EU farm funds and other subsidies are fueling corruption across the bloc, Europe’s top prosecutor warned Thursday.
A massive scam to defraud the EU of hundreds of millions of euros has convulsed Athens this year, after many Greeks improperly received farm subsidies for land they did not own, or for farm work they did not do. Several ministers and deputy ministers resigned over their alleged involvement in the scandal.
But the head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Laura Codruța Kövesi, told POLITICO in an interview that Greece was far from being a one-off.
“I wouldn’t say Greece is very different. We have noticed fraud with the subsidies in almost all the member states, the difference is how much and how many cases we have,” the Romanian graft-buster said.
“In Greece we discovered that the way the criminal activity was committed was very systematic and very well organized, with the involvement of somehow high officials. But we see the same things also in other member states.”
The European Union’s lavish farm subsidies are a tempting target for corruption schemes as they represent one-third of the entire EU budget.
In a press conference earlier in the day, Kövesi also revealed she had received a letter from a Greek farmer claiming honest applicants were excluded from EU funds because others resorted to bribery. “Let’s talk about this: how honest farmers had no access,” she said.
Another of Kövesi’s major targets is the Recovery and Resilience Facility, set up in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic to dole out huge sums of cash to help countries get back on their feet.
Hundreds of RRF cases are currently being investigated by EPPO.
“Now we have these RRF funds. Of course, the organized crime moved the attention to that because they can make money,” she told POLITICO.
Kövesi was speaking in the customs office in Piraeus, Greece’s largest port. Beyond the window lay thousands of shipping containers full of Chinese goods seized by European prosecutors, who uncovered a scheme designed to evade the payment of antidumping duties applicable to Chinese imports, in the biggest investigation of its kind.
The message she sought to send to the criminals behind this fraud was: “The rules of the game have changed, no more safe havens for you. We have discovered a new continent of crime. Organized crime is growing stronger by defrauding the EU and national budgets.”
In order to deal with these cases she is seeking a bigger team, both in Athens and elsewhere. She has requested more European delegated prosecutors to work on her team, leading cross-border investigations into crimes related to the EU budget, as well as dedicated national financial investigators, from police, customs and tax authorities to work exclusively on EPPO cases.
“There is no clean country. Everyone is affected by corruption and financial fraud,” she said.
Some of her investigations are hitting brick walls when it comes to potential political involvement.
In Greece, Kövesi’s team is investigating dozens of cases, including alleged misappropriation of EU funds in connection with a train accident in Tempi that caused the deaths of 57 people. Greece’s conservative New Democracy government rejected EPPO’s call for action against two former ministers after the crash.
“Corruption can kill. Tempi is one of those examples,” she repeated.
The government also blocked a probe into ministers allegedly involved in the snowballing farm fraud. EPPO is investigating how the scheme involved businesspeople, political figures and people working at the organization responsible for overseeing the distribution of the EU subsidies, a state agency called OPEKEPE.
“OPEKEPE has become the acronym for corruption, nepotism and clientelism,” she said during the press conference. “Just like in the Tempi case, this criminal investigation could not develop its full reach because of the Greek constitution.”
Based on a peculiarity of the Greek constitution, only the national parliament has the power to investigate and prosecute members or former members of the Greek government. EPPO has raised the issue with the European Commission, as well as with the Greek authorities and said it had received assurances that this provision would change.
Asked about the ongoing investigation in the Greek parliament, the EU’s top prosecutor referred to high-profile attempts to intimidate her investigators in Greece.
“Justice cannot become a TV reality show. A cat with a bell cannot catch mice,” she said. “EPPO is here to stay. Despite intimidation attempts we are very proud of the EPPO team in Athens.”
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