The European Anti-Fraud Office will analyze the information on the ‘Koldo case’ | Spain

The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has taken little time to respond to the Commission’s request to investigate whether there has been misuse of European funds in the Koldo case. The body that investigates alleged irregularities in relation to the community budgets indicated this Wednesday that it will analyze the information received from the Executive of the Union and “only then will it decide whether or not to open an investigation,” said an OLAF spokesperson.

“OLAF analyzes any information it receives to evaluate whether there is a basis for opening a possible investigation.” [por fraude] regardless of whether it is within their powers and whether the matter is already being investigated by other authorities,” the same source specified regarding the Commission’s demand. Brussels suspects that in the Koldo case European funds were used irregularly and he has asked OLAF to verify this. This is the second community body that will analyze the alleged fraud that may have been committed with money from the EU budget in the Koldo case. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office already does this with at least two contracts for the sale of masks that were sent to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in June by the Spanish anti-corruption prosecutor: one signed by the Balearic Islands and another by the Canary Islands in 2020, probably with money from the European Fund. Regional Development. Both organizations are the two main tools of the European institutions once morest corruption: one, OLAF, is deployed in the administrative field; the prosecution, in the judicial.

Cases regarding different types of irregularities come to OLAF. The first is what has caused the Commission to ask you to intervene: the protection of the EU budget, that is, to find out through administrative means whether in the alleged fraud of the Koldo case there is money from the EU. If the conclusion is that there has been an irregularity, this institution cannot impose sanctions, it can only issue recommendations for the competent authority to take measures. One of them is the recovery of the embezzled money, others is the referral of the case to the courts.

OLAF not only acts before irregularities such as those of the Koldo case, but it also does so when there are “serious suspicions of misconduct” among community officials.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is the other major community tool in the fight once morest corruption. As the Anti-Fraud Office, its main mission is to defend the financial interests of the EU and prosecute crimes affecting the Union budget. The institution headed by Romanian Laura Kovesi is also in charge of pursuing cases of VAT fraud that affect several countries. One of the latest investigations in this field has ended up uncovering a network in Italy that defrauded some 30 million.

Two contracts that would make up the Koldo case They were referred to the European Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in June. It is not the first time that this community body investigates commissions in the purchase of masks during the pandemic. He already did it with Tomás Díaz Ayuso, brother of the president of the Community of Madrid, in a file that caused a clash between the Spanish prosecutor’s office and the community prosecutor’s office. The latter wanted to take care of the entire case, something that Anticorrupción refused. In the end, both investigations were archived.

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Although the two community anti-fraud watchdogs are already on the Koldo case, There is another way in which the European institutions try to find out if there is community money affected by this alleged fraud: contact between the European Commission itself and the Government, specifically regarding the European Funds Management Unit, which depends on the Ministry of Finance, explain community sources. The same ones that point out that audits and control over the structural funds and other chapters of the community budget, such as the common agricultural policy, are common and that their policy is “zero tolerance for fraud.”

These sources point out, in a generic way, that the Commission has tools in its hand to act in cases of fraud: it can demand the return of the money or impose a fine and it might also paralyze the delivery of funds in some of the affected programs.

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