FAQ - Filter by Activities

• Cross-border VAT fraud involving total damages of at least €10 million
• Other types of fraud affecting the EU’s financial interests
• Corruption that damages, or is likely to damage, the EU’s financial interests
• Misappropriation of EU funds or assets by a public official
• Money laundering and organised crime, as well as other offences inextricably linked to one of the previous categories.

But only if they damage, or risk damaging, the EU’s financial interests.

• Non-procurement expenditure fraud: The use or presentation of false, incorrect or incomplete statements or documents in order to obtain EU funding – common in agricultural subsidies (e.g. discrepancies between actual crops cultivated in some land parcels, and those that were indicated in an application for the funds).

• Procurement expenditure fraud: The use or presentation of false, incorrect or incomplete statements or documents in order to obtain contracts for EU-funded projects – widespread in construction, waste, technology and HR development programmes (e.g. rigging specifications in public procurement procedures and inflating costs).

• VAT revenue fraud: The non-payment or unlawful reimbursement of Value Added Tax (VAT), notably via carousel fraud/missing trader schemes, and fraud committed within (or ‘by’) a criminal organisation (e.g. a VAT carousel fraud scheme to re-sell cars multiple times across different EU countries).

• Non-VAT revenue fraud: Fraud concerning revenue of the European Union (‘own resources’), such as the non-payment of customs (e.g. tobacco smuggling or smuggling of high-priced motor vehicles and declaring them to the customs authorities at a falsely reduced value) and anti-dumping duties (e.g. importing e-bikes from China and falsely declaring the country of origin as Malaysia, to evade a payment of anti-dumping and countervailing duties).

• Corruption: Active and passive corruption of public officials, including bribery, collusion and failure to fulfil duties in relation to the awarding of EU funding (e.g. receiving and giving bribes, in connection with awarding of tendered works).

• Non-PIF offences: E.g. fraud causing damage to victims other than the European Union, or tax offences under national law relating to national taxes, where those offences are not PIF offences but inextricably linked to those (e.g. a PIF offence and an offence of abuse of office).

(Note: The above explanations only indicate some typical phenomena and are not comprehensive).

The material competence of the EPPO is determined by Article 22 of the EPPO Regulation. Article 22 of the EPPO Regulation refers to a series of offences deriving from EU law, harmonised by the PIF Directive. The PIF Directive defines which crimes are considered as crimes affecting the EU budget (the so-called ‘PIF crimes’, from the French acronym ‘protection des intérêts financiers’). (see -> https://www.eppo.europa.eu/en/legal-framework)

Yes, it is possible for you to report a crime to us in any of the official languages of the EU: go to the Report a crime tab in our navigation menu.
However, you cannot report every crime to us. It needs to fall within our mandate of crimes affecting the EU budget (see the question “What kind of crime falls under the EPPO’s responsibility?”) If it does not, we kindly ask you to report it to your national authorities.

Please note that reporting a crime can have serious consequences. A crime report that is subsequently proven to be intentionally false or misleading, or intentionally submitted for an illicit purpose, may lead to legal consequences for its sender, including but not limited to administrative and/or criminal sanctions.

You can report a crime to the EPPO’s headquarters in Luxembourg in any of the official languages of the EU, via the ‘Report a Crime’ web form.
Please note that you do not have the option to submit your online crime report anonymously. However, if it is allowed by the national rules, you may do so directly with the European Delegated Prosecutor in your country.