The European Attorney General, Laura Kövesi, has criticized before the Committee on Budgetary Control and Liberties of the European Parliament the lack of cooperation from Spain to be able to investigate possible fraud with European funds.
"All the funds from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism are European money and we have powers to investigate. I have written a letter to all the justice ministers of the member countries to clarify this and most have responded. Spain does not want to respond to our request, I hope it does, because it is very important for us to be able to exercise our powers", he stated at parliamentary headquarters in a session broadcast from Brussels.
He insists like this after publishing EL MUNDO on the 12th of the letter that Kövesi sent to the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, last October asking for collaboration with no response to date. Sources from the Ministry of Justice explained to this newspaper that he had not responded because he considered that the European Attorney General was not requesting anything specific. However, the prosecutor does make a specific request in her letter, to which this newspaper has had access. It maintains that "Member states must guarantee that the Prosecutor's Office can exercise its powers in relation to the funds of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (...) Specifically, they must provide efficient and effective control systems", and added that the recipient states of Funds "should, among other things, collect data from the beneficiaries of the funds, keep records and guarantee the European Public Prosecutor's Office the necessary rights and access to that data." Consequently, she asked Llop to let her know how Spain complies with this obligation.
Kövesi appeared this Thursday to present the latest report from the Prosecutor's Office and took the opportunity to send this message to Spain. Among the attendees were the president of the Liberties commission and former Socialist Minister of Justice, Juan Fernando López Aguilar.
According to the European public prosecutor, there are already ongoing cases under investigation related to European funds in several states of which she declined to give details. "We have started some investigations. We currently have 15 cases in progress and I hope that when we have clarity on all the legislative issues, if there is something that goes wrong we will inform the European Commission"
He has also claimed that the European Public Prosecutor's Office "is independent". "Nobody interferes in our work."
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