National and European authorities are investigating allegations of fraud linked to how €2.5 billion in EU Recovery Funds was awarded to just 10 companies in Greece. Investigation is latest dent to the reputation of EU’s post-pandemic support, writes POLITICO.eu in its exclusive report.
The offices of the country’s three telecommunications firms — Cosmote, Vodafone and Nova — as well as five IT companies and two consultancies were raided by investigators from the Greek competition commission last month. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has also launched an investigation, it confirmed.
The probe is the latest blow to the credibility of the EU’s post-pandemic economic recovery fund, originally worth €723 billion, which doles out loans and grants to the bloc’s 27 countries. Last week, police arrested more than 20 suspects in Italy, Austria, Romania and Slovakia connected to an alleged plot to defraud €600 million from the fund in Italy.
The Greek investigation centers on public tender processes where companies allegedly colluded to avoid more than one of them competing for the same contract ― limiting the number of firms who benefited. This may have driven up the fees they could charge, ultimately preventing Greek taxpayers from reaping the full benefits of its EU money.
With projects worth €35.95 billion, Greece is one of the main beneficiaries of the fund, known as the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). About a fifth of that amount goes toward making the country more digital, according to the plan submitted to the European Commission.
To date, some 600 digital projects worth more than €2.5 billion have been tendered and contracted, according to data from the Central Electronic Register of Public Procurement. The EPPO and the Greek competition commission are investigating how these projects were awarded.
In a statement, Greece’s competition commission said it was examining whether there was a violation of the EU treaty that “prohibits anti-competitive agreements and decisions of associations of undertakings that prevent, restrict or distort competition, unilateral practices that constitute invitation to collude or future price announcements to competitors and the abuse of a dominant position.”
Vodafone confirmed the investigation by the competition commission. The other companies didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Greek prime minister’s office and the country’s development ministry didn’t immediately comment.
More than one bid
Between them, the 10 companies under investigation won contracts for more than 600 projects in the technology sector between 2020 and 2023 , each one worth at least €100,000. Few of those projects had more than one bid during the tender process.
The investigation began when European Dynamics, a Greek software and IT services company, filed a complaint in Nov. 2023 to the European Commission, which oversees the management of the RRF, claiming one public tender was biased in favor of specific companies.
When first published, the tender set the budget for a digital modernization project linked to Greece’s National Electronic Public Procurement System (ESIDIS) at €44 million, several times more than how much a national e-procurement project costs in other EU countries.
Read the whole and very interesting report on politico.eu.
PS Worth noting that many Greeks asked about which companies were winning the bids when then Digital Government Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis (now Education Min) was launching one online platform after the other. Neither the Minister nor the government of PM Mitsotakis ever bothered to respond.
