With more than 2,500 active investigations linked to damage worth 24 billion euros, the European Public Prosecutor's Office has come a long way since 2020, when staff sat at their desks without computers. But Luxembourg-based Gabriel Seixas, a prosecutor at the EPPO, recognizes that despite the giant strides made since then, more can be done. He says the investigative system would be better if all EU countries were to join the EPPO, with three member states not signed up.
With more than 2,500 active investigations linked to 24 billion euros’ ($26 billion) worth of damage, Europe’s chief prosecution agency has come a long way since staff sat at their desks in 2020 without computers. But Luxembourg-based Gabriel Seixas, a prosecutor at the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, recognizes that despite these giant strides, more can be done.Seixas, who has been with the agency since its inception, pointed to the efforts the agency has made to get up and running and to begin targeting criminal gangs since it became fully functioning in June 2021.
“We have not overcome our challenges, because we have daily new challenges appearing. I think the main challenge was to establish a functioning EPPO within record time,” he told MLex in an interview.
“We started work in… September 2020; in June [2021], we were operational, I can tell you, I came to an office I didn't even have a computer,” he said.
The EPPO, an independent European Union prosecutor, was set up to combat crime against the financial interests of the EU. It prosecutes fraud, money laundering and corruption of 10 million euros or more and is headed by ex-Romanian prosecutor Laura Kövesi.
When Poland and Sweden decided to join the organization last year, this took the number of EU countries in the EPPO up to 24, with only Denmark, Hungary and Ireland opting out.
The EPPO’s latest annual report pointed to 1,500 new probes opened last year, an increase of 10 percent, linked to billions of euros in estimated damage to the EU and its budget.
Seixas, a former lawyer and deputy director in Luxembourg’s anti-money laundering unit, said he was upbeat about Poland and Sweden choosing to join the organization, but said that more could be achieved with the three missing countries.
“The message that we always want to pass on is that we would be happy that everyone is on board. This would render the system much more efficient, but that's not in our hands. That's a political decision. Now we are happy that Poland and Sweden joined,” he said.
Both Denmark and Ireland have national opt-out clauses with EU justice issues. While Denmark’s is permanent, the door is ajar for Ireland to join the EPPO, with some talk that it could join by 2026. The EPPO has a working arrangement with Hungary, where it has an agreement with the country's chief prosecutor.
As with all prosecutors, talk often centers on budgetary constraints and whether the EPPO has enough money to carry out its work effectively. The prosecutor acknowledges that questions about money are always close to the fore. “Our workload is gradually increasing each year. We need to increase our resources to tackle all those cases,” Seixas said.
“We always receive much less than the amount that we request. We are still, I would say, a youngster, because we started our activities now, less than four years ago. But when we see that criminality is evolving, we also need to increase our resources, otherwise it will not be efficient.”
Last year, the EPPO froze 849 million euros’ worth of assets, which represents 11 times the organization’s budget.
“In a perfect world it would be good if we feel we could remunerate ourselves on the assets that are being recovered. But that's not the case. That's not foreseen in the regulation,” Seixas said.
Last year the EPPO requested an urgent 7.8 million euros uplift of its budget to take it 79.7 million, but received less than half of what it sought from the European Commission.
Seixas’ comments echo those of his boss Kövesi, who said this month that the EPPO’s capacity needed to be “adapted to reality.”
The majority of the EPPO’s cases are connected with cross-border VAT fraud by criminal organizations. But as with all white-collar crime there is a money laundering element. Increasingly, crypto assets have been used to facilitate this. More could be done to tackle this, the prosecutor said.
“Seizing crypto assets remains a challenge. We have different practices in the member states, and I think at some point there needs to be harmonization. So this is really a challenge.”
Investigators need more training and awareness on how to block and freeze the transfer of assets via crypto, he said. “To make sure that a fraudster cannot transfer funds, you need to block everything.”
Going forward, Seixas said that European authorities need to do more to report potential cases to the EPPO. The body received 6,000 reports last year, but only a tiny fraction came from European authorities that must report fraud to the EPPO.
The European Investment Bank, for example, reported just 20 cases last year, while the European Court of Auditors reported seven. Regular engagement with these institutions will help to drive engagement, Seixas said.
Recently Kövesi spoke about a changing reality for the EPPO and its work.
“A few years ago, the general expectation was that the EPPO would not have much to do. It was designed small to deal with what was commonly considered a ‘niche’ criminality,” she said in a statement accompanying the body's annual report.
Seixas agrees, and said he doesn’t see the work of the prosecutor diminishing over the next year.
“What is clear for us is that workload will continue increasing. This is quite clear. We will always have the presence of organized crime in our cases. We are also making sure that we can tackle organized crime in the right way.”
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