Laura Codruţa Kovesi: "VAT fraud was underestimated, often even tolerated"

VAT fraud was often underestimated, even tolerated by the authorities of the member states of the European Union, which was to the benefit of criminal organizations and to the detriment of citizens, said Laura Codruţa Kovesi, chief prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, in the a lecture he gave yesterday, in front of the students and professors of the Faculty of Law of the Chisinau State University, on the occasion of the opening of the academic year in the Republic of Moldova.

Laura Codruţa Kovesi said: "VAT fraud has been underestimated, often even tolerated, for the benefit of criminal organizations that aspire to undermine and replace legitimate authorities. Under certain circumstances, these criminal organizations do not shy away from extreme violence. (...) Financial fraud is more tolerated because it is not considered dangerous and I think this is wrong. For too long, too many have been in denial about financial fraud. At least in Romania we did not deny and decided to act accordingly, but this is not true everywhere in Europe".

The head of the European Public Prosecutor's Office mentioned that financial frauds are closely related to organized crime, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering and other crimes, which could not take place without corruption in certain sectors of activity.

Codruţa Kovesi said: "In reality, corruption was and continues to be largely tolerated everywhere. There is no such thing as a clean country, and I repeat, to be clear: there is no such thing as a clean country. (...) In other countries, maybe the phenomenon of corruption is less investigated, but that does not mean that there is less corruption. If you don't investigate corruption, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In reality, whenever there is organized crime, there is corruption. For example, usually a large market for illegal drugs is a very reliable indicator of widespread corruption (...) because those drugs enter through the port, airport or border points in one country or another. However, in those places there must be scanners that check everything that enters and leaves the respective country, there are border police, customs inspectors, ANAF inspectors, etc. If there was no corruption, the respective drugs would not enter the country".

She recalled the important role that the European Public Prosecutor's Office has in investigating cross-border fraud and gave the example of Operation Admiral, which started from the notification made by a tax official in Portugal, who noticed that a company with only two employees had revenues of hundreds of millions of euros, and the research carried out at the European level discovered a fraud of 2.2 billion euros, the criminal activity carried out in 14 EU member states and the relationship of the respective company, directly or indirectly, with almost 9000 other small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe.

The head of the European Public Prosecutor's Office also stated that, in her experience, citizens' trust in democratic institutions is largely affected by the perception that justice yields to political interests. In conclusion, Kovesi stated that justice is the first area that must be cleaned of corruption.