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EPPO: when the European Public Prosecutor's Office investigates

The EPPO is effective. That is legitimate. But effectiveness does not replace procedural rights.

Since 2021, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has prosecuted crimes against the EU budget — and serious cross-border VAT fraud has become its largest field of work. Any company trading in EU supply chains can surface in these investigations without ever having defrauded anyone: as the customer of a supplier who later disappears, or as a “buffer” in a chain whose beginning it never saw. This page explains, soberly, how the EPPO operates, what the numbers mean for businesses with German operations — and the three places where a defence builds on procedure rather than indignation. It is written for international groups, their in-house counsel and their German subsidiaries.

An authority that delivers: the numbers

The EPPO’s annual reports trace a steep curve. At the end of 2024 the office ran 2,666 active investigations with an estimated total damage of €24.8 billion; VAT fraud alone accounted for €13.15 billion from just 488 cases — more than half the damage from a fifth of the cases. Germany accounted for 179 active VAT investigations with an estimated €3.89 billion in damage. One year later, at the end of 2025, the office reported 3,602 active investigations, estimated damage of €67.27 billion — and 981 ongoing VAT and customs fraud investigations worth around €45 billion. In 2025 alone, freezing orders of €1.13 billion were granted.

These figures are not scare material; they are a yardstick. They show that VAT cases are the EPPO’s core business, that asset freezing is a standard instrument rather than an exception, and that Germany is one of its operational centres of gravity.

For Germany, robust empirical data is now available. The EPPO/OLAF Compendium published in 2026 counts 114 German EPPO investigations for the year 2022 — 66 of them VAT carousels, with damage of roughly €1.5 billion. The authors’ constitutional diagnosis is remarkable: the EPPO architecture, they write, operates “persistently on the constitutional nerve” of German criminal procedure. Which is exactly why procedural scrutiny belongs in every EPPO defence — not as authority-bashing, but as craft.

The chain of evidence 2021–2026: operations, each with a date

To gauge how real the risk is for your business, you need no academic studies — the EPPO’s own press archive suffices. We have analysed it in full: 908 releases between June 2021 and August 2026, 185 of them VAT-related, condensed into 112 distinct investigation complexes. And that is only the published excerpt: at the end of 2025 the EPPO was running 981 active VAT and customs fraud investigations with estimated damage of around €45 billion — two thirds of its entire damage volume from roughly a quarter of its cases. The following selection shows the range — from the billion-euro complex down to a three-country search operation over €285,000:

Three patterns deserve attention. First, the typology of suspects is shifting from letterbox companies to real, market-established businesses — car-dealer groups (Emily), IT distributors (the Frankfurt proceedings), logistics providers and, occasionally, advisers. Second, the EPPO routinely frames its allegation as knowing participation (“knowingly participated”) — the same test structure that German tax law litigates through Section 25f of the German VAT Act (UStG): the case is decided on the knowledge element. Third — and this is central for the defence: even the EPPO concedes that holding a formal corporate office proves no knowledge. In an Italian textile investigation of August 2026, the authority itself records that the companies involved were formally run by “front persons” who “may have been unaware of the offences committed”. What the investigators concede there for figurehead officers applies a fortiori to the honest intermediate trader: a position in the chain is not guilt — knowledge must be proven, for each person and for each point in time. The presumption of innocence applies to all suspects in the proceedings listed above; damage figures are the investigating authorities’ estimates. (Press release, 10 Aug 2026)

How the EPPO works — and where the control sits

The 2017 EPPO Regulation creates a two-tier authority: a College and Permanent Chambers in Luxembourg, and European Delegated Prosecutors in the member states — in Germany at several locations including Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Cologne. The office is competent for offences against the EU’s financial interests; for VAT fraud it takes over where the conduct is connected with the territory of at least two member states and involves total damage of at least €10 million. Through its right of evocation it can take over cases begun by national authorities; on the ground, it works through the national investigative apparatus — in Germany, typically the Steuerfahndung, the specialised tax fraud investigation units.

For cross-border measures, Article 31 of the Regulation creates an assignment model: a handling European Delegated Prosecutor orders the measure, an assisting Delegated Prosecutor in another member state executes it. In G.K. (December 2023), the Court of Justice clarified the control architecture: the substantive justification of the measure is reviewed by the courts of the handling prosecutor’s state, while the courts of the assisting state review its execution. The 2025 doctoral study by Zerbst measured this double structure against German and Spanish law and isolated the decisive point: where both legal orders require judicial authorisation, both judicial decisions must actually exist — dispensing with one of them is not convincing. And: a measure that was inadequately authorised or controlled endangers not only defence rights but the usability of the evidence itself. Procedural safeguards, in other words, are not a privilege for suspects; they are a functioning condition of lawful prosecution.

In 2026 the Court of Justice answered the control question conclusively — and not in favour of one central avenue of review. Procedural acts of the EPPO with effects on third parties — such as the Permanent Chamber’s decision to bring a case to trial — are reviewed by the national courts, not the EU courts; entrusting that control to the member states is compatible with the Treaties (Mincu, April 2026). Effective prosecution is legitimate. But the defence must now plan, on confirmed authority, on two tracks: use the national remedies rigorously and keep the preliminary-reference route to Luxembourg open. And the EPPO’s evidence-gathering is growing: an EU institution may refuse to authorise its staff to testify in EPPO investigations only where vital Union interests are at stake (General Court, June 2026). The office is getting stronger. All the more important to know who can challenge its acts — and where.

Three lines of defence — sober, not polemical

First: test jurisdiction and the procedural path. Is the €10 million threshold solidly reasoned — or does it rest on a damage estimate that attributes the whole network to one link in the chain? Is the cross-border element established for this specific suspect? How was the evocation documented, and which Permanent Chamber decided? Jurisdiction sounds technical. It determines which courts control the case, which law applies and which remedies exist.

Second: scrutinise how evidence was obtained — and whether it can be used. For every cross-border measure: were the judicial decisions required after G.K. obtained in both states? Does the search warrant actually cover the data that was seized? How were devices, cloud accounts and servers logged? The CJEU’s EncroChat ruling (M.N., 2024) shows that using data gathered across borders is not a formality but remains tied to EU-law and national guarantees. A defence that documents early — rather than complaining late — preserves admissibility challenges for the interim proceedings and trial.

Third: file access and information rights — the Glencore line. Criminal proceedings almost always run in parallel with German tax proceedings: denial assessments, liability notices, asset freezes. There, the CJEU’s Glencore line (2019) applies: the administration may not base its decision on evidence to which the taxpayer had no effective access and no hearing — including findings imported from related proceedings against third parties. If you are being incriminated by Eurofisc signals, network analytics or findings against other links in the chain, you hold a lever: demand disclosure of the data sources and factual basis instead of arguing against a black box — the full reach of that right is set out on our page Access to the file after Glencore: the whole file, not half of it. The tax-court track is where the defence can set pace and facts — the “tax lead” we develop on our page about the German asset freeze under § 324 AO.

German EPPO practice has produced a concrete toolkit for all three lines:

EPPO readiness: what honest companies should have in place

An EPPO investigation is not a verdict; the presumption of innocence applies in full. But it is a large-scale event with minimal warning: search waves of 59 (Goliath), 100+ (Mela), 150+ (Emily) and 350+ (Admiral 2.0) show that for most companies the first contact is the dawn raid itself. Preparation is therefore not distrust of the state — it is organisational capability: a 72-hour plan with clear responsibilities (see Dawn raid in Germany: the first 72 hours); a maintained evidence pack that separates relevant from irrelevant data and thereby also limits the practical reach of seizures; and a documented verification and escalation practice that rebuts the knowledge element out of the company’s own records rather than out of late affidavits.

The EPPO will keep up its pace; the Commission is working to widen its data access further. Honest companies do not need to fear that — provided their own evidence architecture keeps step. It is not indignation that protects. It is evidence.

FAQ

When does the EPPO have jurisdiction over VAT offences?

For serious cross-border VAT fraud: the conduct must be connected with at least two member states and involve total damage of at least €10 million. Both elements can — and should — be tested in the individual case.

Will the German Steuerfahndung still be involved?

Yes, but under different direction: European Delegated Prosecutors work through national investigative authorities. In parallel, the German tax proceedings (assessments, stay of execution, asset freeze) continue — and that is where the economic pre-decisions fall.

What does the G.K. judgment mean for searches at our German subsidiary?

For cross-border measures, the courts of the ordering prosecutor’s state review the justification, the courts of the executing state review the execution. If one of the required judicial decisions is missing or deficient, the usability of the evidence is in question.

Can we see the data that put us on the radar?

In the parallel tax proceedings, yes — under the CJEU’s Glencore line, the administration may not rely on evidence the taxpayer could not effectively access. A disclosure request aimed at data sources is a central, often underused application.

Does an EPPO investigation mean we are guilty?

No. The presumption of innocence applies in full. Recent operations show precisely that genuinely trading companies end up inside risk grids — the dividing line is the knowledge element, and that is decided by documented diligence.

What should an international group with a German subsidiary put in place now?

Three things: a 72-hour crisis plan with named responsibilities, an exportable evidence pack for the critical supply chains, and a documented red-flag practice. Not out of fear — out of organisational duty.

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