The increased involvement of organised crime groups in financial crime involving EU funds underlines the urgency of Ireland joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), the European chief prosecutor has said.
Ireland should join the EPPO as soon as possible because organised crime “does not have a holiday” and Ireland is among many European states needing protection from financial fraudsters, Laura Kövesi said.
Financial criminality costs the EU several billion euro annually which could be better used for national budgets rather than going into the hands of criminals, she told The Irish Times.
The EPPO wants all EU member states to be part of it because it has a “helicopter” view of crime across the Continent in contrast to “fragmented” views of national prosecutors and police forces, she said. “We can connect all the dots.”
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Ireland, Denmark and Hungary are the only three of 27 EU member states who are not members of EPPO but they co-operate with its work. Hungary had decided against joining while Denmark and Ireland have an opt-out from the area of freedom, security and justice.
Ms Kövesi, who is head of the EPPO, met the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, in Dublin on Wednesday, to discuss the benefits of Ireland joining EPPO.
Afterwards, a spokesman for the Minister said the meeting was “productive” and they discussed Ireland’s co-operation with EPPO, the future funding of EPPO and Ireland’s priorities for the presidency of the EU.
An inter-agency steering group was established in 2024 to develop the detailed arrangements that need to be put in place to allow Ireland to participate in EPPO, he said.
This work has concluded, and the Minister intends to bring the general scheme of legislation that would allow Ireland to opt in to EPPO to Government in early 2026, in advance of Ireland’s presidency of the EU, the spokesman added.
Describing the meeting as “excellent”, Ms Kövesi told The Irish Times that, from the perspective of the EPPO, having Ireland as a member is urgent.
Organised crime does not “have a holiday” and, since it began its operations 4½ years ago, EPPO has discovered “a new continent of crime”, including connections with Ireland via citizens, Irish companies or companies based in Ireland, she said.
Financial crime was seen for years as a “niche”, “white collar” criminality that was non-violent but, through its work, EPPO has seen financial crime becoming more violent, she said.
Organised crime groups were behind some huge schemes and had started to use violence, including to gain territory or take over small businesses, she said. “You cannot say they are separate worlds, they are very well connected and unfortunately Ireland is not protected – there is no clean country in Europe.”
One example of EPPO’s work was an investigation into a small company based in Portugal with two employees and income of more than €200 million in one year, she said. The local tax authorities reported suspicions to the Portuguese prosecutor who could detect no criminal activity in Portugal but informed the EPPO about some transactions in other European states.
After pooling information from financial investigators and analysts, the EPPO made connections between more than 6,000 companies and more than 600 individuals and discovered five criminal organisations were behind a €2.2 billion carousel fraud in EU member states. That investigation will result in €80m being returned to the Portuguese exchequer, she said.
The EPPO’s latest annual report revealed it froze assets worth about €849 million last year and had 2,666 active investigations at the end of the year, with estimated damage to the EU budget of almost €25 billion, of which more than half was linked to cross-border fraud, with “almost systematic” involvement of criminal organisations.
Ms Kövesi, who worked for more than 30 years as a prosecutor in her native Romania before joining EPPO, was also in Ireland to receive the Praeses Elit award from the Law Society of Trinity College Dublin. The award, founded by former president Mary Robinson, is presented to individuals who have made significant contributions to their field and inspired others.
