Portuguese police carried out 78 raids on Tuesday as part of Operation Maestro, targeting projects co-financed by EU funds that would have allowed suspects to make illegal profits of almost €39 million between 2015 and 2023, the Judicial Police, confirmed on Tuesday.
The searches took place in the Lisbon and Oporto metropolitan areas and in Aveiro and Guarda.
“Through the 14 projects co-financed by the ERDF [European Regional Development Fund], carried out between 2015 and 2023, the suspects have so far managed to obtain incentive payments totalling at least €38,938,631.46”, the Judicial Police explained in a statement, Euractiv’s partner Lusa, reported.
“At stake are organised fraud schemes that benefited a number of individuals and companies, damaging the financial interests of the European Union and the Portuguese state, both in terms of funding through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and through the evasion of taxes due,” the statement continued.
“The ‘modus operandi’ is based on creating complex corporate structures.”
According to the investigation, these companies aimed to “assemble contractual justifications for the provision of services and the supply of goods to fraudulently raise EU funds in the context of at least 14 operations, most of which were approved under the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), carried out since 2015.”
A judicial source told Lusa that some projects financed or implemented under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) are also under investigation.
According to the authorities, the ongoing investigation “also gave rise to strong suspicions of the involvement of officials from public bodies.”
The police operation was carried out as part of an investigation by the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action, and the investigation is being conducted by the PJ’s National Anti-Corruption Unit with the support of the Prosecutor’s Technical Advisory Centre.
PJ also said the investigation “will continue with analysing the evidence now collected”.
(Jorge Afonso Silva | Lusa.pt)
