LA VALLETTA (MALTA) (ITALPRESS/MNA) – The Maltese authorities were heavily criticized by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office for not doing enough and not taking responsability in the fight against EU fraud and corruption.
While addressing Europarliamentarians, the European Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruta Kòvesi referred to her visit to Malta last October and declared that following her meetings, she concluded that the national institutions were shifting the blame with regards to the responsability on identifying such crimes.
“I visited Malta. I had meetings with the national authorities and after two days it was very difficult for me to identify the institution that is responsible for detecting crimes,” she said. “All of them said that ‘it’s not me. It’s them.’ And when I visited them, they said ‘it’s not us’.”
Only two out of 2,200 reports received by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office were from Malta and the Mediterranean island is the only participating member State that has yet to open a single investigation.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office commenced its operations on 1 June 2021 when it started to investigate and prosecute crimes affecting the Union’s financial interests that were committed after 20 November 2017. So far, it has seized some €147 million in assets, made arrests, and currently has 515 active investigations accumulating an estimated €5.4 billion in damages.
-foto rog-
(ITALPRESS).

Source: medNews