Brussels, April 14 /Agerpres/ - EU funds are being siphoned off through corruption, fraud and abuse - from fake jobs to forged invoices. According to the latest report by the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), the misuse of EU money remains widespread across the 27-nation bloc.

From 'Qatargate' and 'Huaweigate' to the recent conviction of Marine Le Pen for embezzling EU funds, high-profile scandals - all playing out at the European Parliament - have put corruption within the European Union and its institutions in the spotlight.

Twenty people were charged in the 'Qatargate' case in 2022. EU lawmakers were accused of taking huge bribes to promote the interests of Qatar and Morocco - something both countries deny - but the case is weighed down in legal challenges with no trial in sight.

More than two years later, an investigation into Huawei came to light. Eight people have been charged in early April in a probe into suspected corruption in the Parliament involving the Chinese tech giant. They are being accused of active corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation, the Belgian federal prosecutor's office said amid ongoing investigations.

Meanwhile, France's far-right National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen was convicted by a French court on March 31 over an estimated 2.9 million Euro scheme to take advantage of European Parliament expenses to employ assistants who were actually working for her party in France between 2004 and 2016. Le Pen has denied any wrongdoing.

Hopes to prevent new cases in the European Parliament - or any EU institutions for that matter - rose after a common ethics body was agreed upon in early 2024 to help with enforcement and boost accountability across EU institutions. It has however become bogged down in a political fight.

Additionally, a European Court of Auditors report on Monday said the allocation of EU funds to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is not transparent - further fuelling concerns over the use of EU funds, with public interest in transparency growing in the wake of the Qatargate scandal.

The picture gets all the more murky as the EU seeks to challenge democratic backsliding from Türkiye to Hungary and assert itself as a bulwark against the might-is-right worldview of US President Donald Trump.


What is 'Huaweigate'?

In the latest scandal rocking the Parliament since mid-March, investigators are looking into possible embezzlement or gifts offered by Huawei representatives or lobbyists to MEPs to defend its interests in the deployment of 5G telecommunications technology.

Around 100 police officers searched 21 homes in Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders in mid-March, and detained seven lobbyists linked to Huawei. Belgian prosecutors said the alleged corruption dated from 2021 to the present.

Chinese technology in Western mobile communications has been a hot topic of discussion for years. Critics of Huawei fear that China could gain access to mobile networks through the company.

Huawei however stressed that it has a zero-tolerance policy on corruption. 'As always, we are committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations,' it said.

Parliament authorities, meanwhile, say they are 'fully cooperating' with the Huawei probe. Soon after the scandal broke out, the European Parliament banned lobbyists working for Huawei from entering its premises.


And who's involved?

One of the main suspects is Belgian-Italian Valerio Ottati, Huawei's EU public affairs director. Seven other lobbyists have been charged, but the investigation is ongoing and the full list of individual suspects has not been publicly disclosed.

At the centre of the investigation is a letter sent to the European Commission defending the Chinese tech giant's interests in Europe, in particular the deployment of the 5G mobile network. Eight MEPs signed the letter.

Prosecutors said Huawei paid two intermediary companies to funnel payments to MEPs in return for signing the letter. Portuguese lobbyist Nuno Wahnon Martins, along with Ottati, is suspected of authoring the letter.

The Belgian authorities believe that Martins issued two 'fictitious' invoices, totaling 45.950 Euro, to a Belgian design company and a British events company, which in turn received significant amounts from Huawei Technologies Belgium before and after the letter was sent to the Commission.

Martins was also an adviser for the Italian MEP Fulvio Martusciello between 2015 and 2019. Martusciello is one of the MEPs linked to the letter that was allegedly used to try to influence the Commission's decisions.

The former Slovenian conservative MEP Franc Bogoviè was also mentioned in an article by the investigative journalism platform 'Follow the Money', but is currently not a suspect in the probe. In 2019, Bogoviè moderated a panel on cybersecurity organised by a Huawei lobbyist and in 2016 visited Huawei's offices in Ljubljana. He denied any involvement in the Huawei scandal.


Series of scandals blow to EU public trust

The newly established EU ethics watchdog said the succession of scandals 'damage public trust in the EU'.

While the aforementioned scandals continue to shake the democratic core of the European Union in Brussels, the misuse or embezzlement of EU funds across the bloc is nothing new.

Last week, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) and their local counterparts searched the Croatian Foreign Ministry as part of a probe into the alleged illegal use of funds.

The actions came 'in the wake of a criminal investigation into possible abuse of position and authority at the ministry involving funds from the (EU's) Internal Security Fund and the state budget of the Republic of Croatia,' EPPO said.

The investigation targets seven people, according to the state-run HRT television. They are suspected of forging hotel invoices and costs for cars they used for official trips abroad from 2019 to 2024, it reported.

In 2011, the then-MEP and former Slovenian foreign minister Zoran Thaler resigned after the British weekly The Sunday Times wrote that he had accepted a bribe from journalists posing as lobbyists in return for filing legislative amendments. He later pleaded guilty of taking a bribe and was sentenced at the Ljubljana District Court.

EPPO opened 18 investigations in Slovenia in 2024 for suspected misuse of EU funds, totalling 16 million Euro, according to its latest annual report.

In the Czech Republic, the latest case involving EU funds surrounds the former director of Prague's Motol University Hospital - former Social Democratic health minister Miloslav Ludvik - and his deputy, Pavel Budinsky. They were allegedly bribed by contractors who provided construction projects, cleaning services or maintenance work for the hospital. Contracts were worth around 160 million Euro.

The EPPO dealt with 71 new cases in the Czech Republic last year, 28 more than the year before, with an estimated total damage of 596 million Euro, according to the annual report.

In Bulgaria, the EPPO has been investigating the expansion of the Chiren gas facility since summer 2024 over alleged misuse of EU funds. In March, it suspended European Prosecutor Teodora Georgieva after she recused herself from the case, citing safety concerns and accusing politician and leader of the MRF-New Beginning party Delyan Peevski of pressuring contractors to deviate from specifications and safety standards for personal gain and for interfering with the investigation. Peevski denies the allegations made by Georgieva.

Georgieva's suspension coincided with a leak of secretly made videos in the press which suggested foul play in her election as a European prosecutor.

The EPPO's 2024 annual report shows that as of December 31 there were 254 active investigations concerning Bulgaria with a total estimated damage of 1.13 billion Euro. Out of them, 19 were related to corruption.

According to the report, Italy is responsible for the greatest estimated damage to the EU budget linked to active investigations into alleged fraud and financial wrongdoing. It said that there were 764 active investigations for such cases at the end of 2024, with an estimated damage to the EU budget of 7.05 billion Euro, including 4.65 billion Euro from VAT (value-added tax) fraud.

Italy was also top in terms of investigations launched into fraud regarding funding linked to the NextGenerationEU programme, with 228 active investigations out of a total of 311.

The report also said EPPO had a total of 2,666 investigations open, with an overall estimated damage to the EU budget of 24.8 billion Euro.

The EPPO, in operation since June 2021, with 24 participating countries, deals with cross-border VAT frauds, frauds affecting EU spending and customs fraud, as well as related corruption, embezzlement and money laundering.


The content of this article is based on reporting by AFP, ANSA, APA, BTA, CTK, dpa, EFE, Lusa, STA, as part of the European Newsroom (enr) project. AGERPRES (editing by: Mariana Ionescu)