Estimated loss to country calculated at almost €850 million
Portugal opened 26 investigations with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in 2023, bringing the total number of active investigations to 43, and representing an estimated loss of €928.6 million, writes Lusa – with fraud relating to value-added tax accounting for almost all of this amount.
According to data from the annual activity report of the EPPO, the 26 investigations opened in 2023 represent an estimated loss to the EU budget of €186.6 million.
Of the 43 active investigations, 15 concern VAT fraud and the resulting loss to Portugal is estimated at €848.5 million.
In 2023, Portugal obtained a court order freezing assets worth €12.3 million.
The country has an indictment produced last year, under the so-called Operation Admiral, which accused 27 defendants – 12 people and 15 companies – of criminal association, corruption, tax fraud and money laundering offences and in which, for the acts committed in Portugal alone, tax fraud of around €80 million is estimated through a chain of companies that evaded paying VAT, with “the use of false invoices and fraudulent tax returns,” said EPPO in a statement in December.
Portugal has yet to finalise any of its active cases; only Operation Admiral has reached the trial stage.
In 2023 Portugal received 41 complaints, mostly from Portuguese authorities, Lusa continues.
Despite accounting for almost all of the estimated losses in active investigations, VAT fraud accounts for only 31% of the crimes under investigation by Portuguese European prosecutors at the EPPO, with money laundering accounting for 21% of the crimes under investigation and fraud in obtaining subsidies accounting for 13% of the crimes.
European Union funds for agriculture and rural development, urban and regional development and the recovery and resilience programme are the European funding programmes with the most cases under investigation by national prosecutors.
The EPPO currently has 22 member states (Portugal, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Spain, France, Finland, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia) and its Portuguese European prosecutor is José Ranito.
The body, which functions as an independent and highly specialised public prosecutor’s office, became active in June 2021 and has the power to investigate, prosecute, bring charges and uphold them in the pre-trial and trial proceedings against perpetrators of criminal offences affecting the EU’s financial interests (e.g. fraud, corruption and/ or cross-border VAT fraud of more than €10 million).
And yesterday it was responsible for major swoops in 17 different countries (Portugal included) over what has been termed a ‘cluster Midas’, again involving VAT fraud. For details click here.
Lusa/ EPPO.Europa.EU
