According to the daily Le Soir and the AFP agency, former EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who led the EU diplomatic service from 2014 to 2019 and has been rector of the University of Bruges since 2020, is among those detained. The media outlets cite unnamed sources close to the investigation.
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According to AFP, police detained two other people in Brussels, including a senior European Commission official. According to Le Soir, former EEAS Secretary-General Stefano Sannino was among those detained.
According to one eyewitness, around ten plainclothes police officers stormed the EEAS headquarters at 7:30 a.m. today. Another EU diplomatic official confirmed the raid to Euractiv.
The subject of the investigation is the EU Diplomatic Academy project, which was established by the EU Council in May last year. It is a nine-month training programme for junior diplomats from EU member states, which the European External Action Service awarded to the College of Europe for the period 2021 and 2022 following a public tender.
The prosecutor's office aims to determine whether the academy or its representatives were informed in advance about the selection criteria of the public tender and whether they had sufficient reason to believe that they would be assigned to implement the project before the official publication of the notice launching the tender by the European External Action Service.
According to the prosecutor's office, there are strong suspicions that during the public procurement, a violation of the Regulation on the Budgetary Rules of Fair Competition occurred and that confidential information about its course was provided to one of the participating bidders.
Before the searches were carried out, the prosecutor's office requested the lifting of the immunity of several suspects, which was approved. According to the prosecutor's office, the investigation could reveal public procurement fraud, corruption, conflict of interest and violation of professional secrecy.
“These raids are the latest major scandal to hit the EU institutions, putting pressure on both the College of Europe and its rector, Federica Mogherini, who previously led the EEAS and began a second five-year term in office this year,” Euractiv said.
