The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is still a young institution since it was set up in June 2021 only. It brings together magistrates from 22 countries of the European Union. And his goal is to prosecute fraud on European money: customs fraud, VAT fraud, corruption, embezzlement,… His credo: “protecting European taxpayers’ money from criminals”.
When it was set up, the annual loss of these frauds was estimated at between 400 and 500 million.
But very quickly, he realized that this fraud was much higher. After 100 days of operation, it already announced that it had opened some 300 investigations into a total damage estimated at 4.5 billion.
A few months later, he published his report on the year 2021: he had opened 576 investigations and he then estimated the amount of damage due to the various frauds at 5.4 billion euros.
Its second annual report covers the year 2022. Last year, 1117 investigations were opened. And the amount of damage to the European budget amounts to 14.1 billion. A sum that is far to be negligible and half of which is represented by VAT fraud!
But the situation is very different from one country to another, whether in terms of the number of investigations opened or the estimated amounts of the various frauds.