Lisbon, Sept. 12, 2025 (Lusa) - The European Public Prosecutor was in Portugal trying to convince the government that more resources and police dedicated to the European Public Prosecutor's Office can translate into many millions recovered from organised crime for the national coffers.
On a two-day working visit to Portugal, Laura Kövesi, the Romanian prosecutor who has led the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) since its inception, met with the government in an "unprecedented format", which she praised.
At the initiative of the justice minister, the European attorney-general sat at the table with Rita Alarcão Júdice, the finance minister, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, and the secretary of state for home affairs, Paulo Simões Ribeiro.
Taking as an example two major investigations involving Portugal, Operation Admiral and Operation Ambrosia, cases of VAT fraud, one of the most practised and most investigated crimes by the agency, Laura Kövesi emphasised that these two cases could represent €75 million, already seized by the EPPO, recovered for the national budget.
In the case of Operation Admiral, there has already been a first instance judgement.
"This is EPPO's contribution. But everything we've achieved so far has been based above all on the great effort of our team working here [in Portugal] at the EPPO, in collaboration with the national authorities. And that effort has to be sustained and has to continue," said the European Prosecutor General in an interview with Lusa at the EPPO's newly opened premises in Lisbon, which now occupy offices given over to the Public Prosecutor's Office in the former premises of the Judicial Police.
"It was important to discuss how we can improve this and how we can have more resources allocated to better fight organised crime, because, at the end of the day, this is not just about numbers, money that is lost and remains in the hands of criminals. It's also about internal security and the economic effects," he added.
In this context, having police dedicated to the EPPO, something that Portuguese European Prosecutor José Ranito has already signalled as a priority, would, in Laura Kövesi's view, be a "win-win situation", because it would make it possible to work more efficiently, increasing the recovery of losses and also the number of convictions.
Asked if the resources allocated should evolve so that EPPO had its own transnational police force, Kövesi had no doubts: "If you ask me, as a prosecutor, it would be the ideal scenario."
"We have the first transnational prosecutor's office, and we need to have a transnational police force. We don't have one. It will have to be a decision taken by the legislature," she said.
Emphasising the great support given to the EPPO by Europol, she stressed, however, that this entity does not have the competence to investigate cases, and that having police dedicated to the European Public Prosecutor's Office in each state, working only on these cases, in a joint and coordinated manner, would translate into a "de facto" transnational police force.
Laura Kövesi also tried to make the finance minister aware of the importance, including financially, of increasing the detection of crime and fraud, particularly VAT fraud, at entry points into the country, which is also one of the European Union's external borders and where, for example, national ports have seen an increase in smuggling offences, particularly to evade tariffs.
Pointing to estimates of annual losses of more than €50 billion in these crimes, Kövesi also said that organised crime has reorganised its activities, directing them towards the economic sector, which is very lucrative and much less risky than drug trafficking, underlining the weight of Chinese criminal groups.
"We see that there is a lot of violence so that these criminal groups can gain more power and territory. And we also see a phenomenon of money laundering from the profits of crime. All the money from drug trafficking is reinvested in VAT fraud, for example, because it's easier and there are high profits to be made. And if you have a member state with low levels of [crime] detection, you can operate freely and make a lot of money without anyone seeing what's going on," she said.
Laura Kövesi said that if it didn't happen before, now, with EPPO and its work, member states are aware of the threats to internal security that this crime involves.
"When I started this work five years ago, I would hear around me “we are a clean country” or “we don't have a problem” with VAT fraud or corruption. You know what? It's not true. There are no clean countries and we see these kinds of offences being committed everywhere in Europe. The problem is how much the national authorities want to be involved," he said.
Laura Kövesi also rejected visions of an "administrative solution" to these problems and, giving the example of Portugal, where many front companies have been set up for criminal activities, emphasised that it's not enough to close down companies, because that alone doesn't make it possible to find out what they were doing, nor does it prevent them from opening their doors in another country the day after they've been closed down.
EPPO currently has 24 member states, with Poland and Sweden joining in 2024.
The body, which functions as an independent and highly specialised public prosecutor's office, became active on 1 June 2021 and has the power to investigate, prosecute, bring charges and uphold them in pre-trial and trial proceedings against the perpetrators of criminal offences affecting the financial interests of the European Union (e.g. fraud, corruption or cross-border VAT fraud of more than €10 million).
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