The EU is adding Russia to its blacklist of countries at high risk of money laundering and financing terrorism, according to two EU officials and a document seen by POLITICO. The global watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) suspended Russia as a member after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but failed to blacklist it, despite evidence presented by the Ukrainian government, because of opposition from countries in the BRICS group of emerging economies, which includes Brazil, India, China, and South Africa. EU lawmakers called on the Commission many times to do what FATF was not able to. The Commission committed to complete a review by the end of 2025 to get their support to remove the United Arab Emirates and Gibraltar from the list earlier this year. POLITICO saw a draft of the Russia decision, which will be an annex to the list. In other internal documents, the Commission had said that the assessment was complicated by the lack of information-sharing with Moscow. The EU already has a wide range of sanctions heavily limiting access to EU financial services for Russian firms. The blacklisting is landing as the EU executive is trying to end Belgium’s resistance to using the revenues from Moscow’s frozen assets to fund Ukraine. The move will oblige financial institutions to strengthen due diligence on all transactions and force banks that have not already acted to further de-risk. The EU has usually aligned itself with FATF decisions, but from this year, it has its own Anti-Money Laundering Authority. AMLA will contribute to drafting the blacklist from July 2027. Dutch top official Hennie Verbeek-Kusters, a former chair of the financial intelligence cooperation body Egmont Group, is set to join the AMLA authority executive board after a positive hearing with lawmakers held behind closed doors, one of the EU officials said. A vote on the appointment is due on Dec. 15, said a third official.

LILLE, France — France’s plan for winning the race to host a European customs watchdog has become clear: Set the pace for the bidding war. POLITICO was among 20 officials from all over Europe on a trip to the northern French city on Tuesday for an in-person look at Lille’s bid to host the new European Union Customs Authority. In what felt like a joyful school trip, visitors toured the agency’s office, where the authority’s future 250 employees would work — a state-of-the-art white building adjacent to the train station and Lille’s Flemish old town. They then took a stroll in the multilingual European school where future officials could send their kids. Invitees even got a guided tour of the city center and tasted local delicacies during a lunch that one of the attendees described as “the heaviest of my life.” Though other cities like Warsaw, Málaga and Porto have made their candidacies official, no other potential host has started this early and campaigned so hard to date (bids are due Nov. 27). France is also likely to benefit from the fact that it has taken a leading role in one of the most pressing issues facing customs authorities today: the flood of cheap goods from China. French officials this week launched a high-profile fight against Shein, moving to suspend the platform in France following allegations that the Chinese fast-fashion e-commerce giant was selling childlike sex dolls. Authorities also took the extraordinary step of inspecting more than 200,000 parcels from Shein that had arrived at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport.  Official from allover the EU got a taste of French hospitality as they visited Lille. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO France led the charge to tax purchases made on platforms like Shein, Temu and AliExpress by proposing a €2 levy on any small parcel worth more than €150 coming from outside the bloc. The EU is considering following suit. “The advantage of hosting the authority in Lille is also that France is the country that has realized the most the danger coming from Chinese e-commerce platforms,” said Socialist member of the European Parliament François Kalfon as he walked through Lille city center. Hosting the customs authority would create “a favorable ecosystem” to make sure that French activism on customs control turns into a European approach, he said.  Kalfon added, the fact that France already hosts several other European Union agencies — there are five on French soil, plus the European Parliament in Strasbourg — shouldn’t count against the bid. Lille has some geographic advantages compared to those other three cities officially in the running. It is just over 100 kilometers from Brussels, and well connected to many major airports and harbors — a key asset for an authority charged with monitoring customs data from all over the bloc to keep out unsafe and illicit products. Still, Paris is taking no chances after two recent stinging defeats in bids to host the bloc’s anti-money laundering authority and its medicines agency. France wants to host the future authority in a state-of-the-art new building next to Lille train station. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO Laurent Saint-Martin, who recently served as both trade and budget minister for France, along with former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, are leading the bid. Saint-Martin told POLITICO while walking down the steps of what he hopes will be the future customs authority HQ that the key was to get out of the starting blocks early, reaching out to other countries and MEPs — even if the exact voting procedure hasn’t been settled on yet. Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Croatia could soon launch their own bids for hosting the customs authority, according to several officials with direct knowledge of their plans who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. And candidate countries are lobbying to host the it in chats with officials from EU member countries. But France’s decision to get the jump out of the gate appears to be bearing fruit. Several non-French officials on the trip, likewise granted anonymity to discuss an ongoing competitive bid without official authorization, said the were impressed by the bid. “This is the right moment,” one of them said. “The others are still a few steps behind.”

LONDON — Britain’s financial watchdogs have been on a crypto journey — with a little help from Donald Trump.  The Bank of England publishes its long-awaited rules for stablecoin Monday. Two years after the central bank’s Governor Andrew Bailey dismissed the virtual currency — a theoretically more stable form of crypto — as “not money,” its rulebook is now expected to get a cautious welcome from an industry that’s been lobbying hard for a rethink. It would mark quite a shift from the U.K. central bank. Stablecoins “are not robust and, as currently organized, do not meet the standards we expect of safe money in the financial system,” Bailey told a City of London audience in 2023.  Now his top officials herald a “fabulous opportunity.”  The Bank chief’s initial position — that he doesn’t see stablecoins as a substitute for commercial bank money — has put him at odds with the U.K. Treasury, which is on an all-consuming mission to get the sluggish British economy moving. Chancellor Rachel Reeves wants the U.K. “at the forefront of digital asset innovation.”  The United States crypto lobby, fresh from several wins stateside, spied an opportunity. Exploiting those divisions — and pointing to a more gung-ho approach from Trump’s U.S. — has allowed firms to push for a British regime that more closely aligns with their own.  Monday could be a very good day at the office.  TREADING CAREFULLY Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency pegged to a real asset, like the dollar, with the largest and best-known offering being Tether. They’re seen as a more palatable version of crypto, and are used by investors to buy other cryptocurrencies, or allow cross-border payments.  The pro-stablecoin camp says their development is necessary to improve payments and overseas transactions for businesses and consumers, particularly as cash usage declines and sending money abroad remains clunky and expensive. If done well, a stablecoin could maintain a reliable store of value and be a viable alternative to cash.  Stablecoins (USDT) are a type of cryptocurrency pegged to a real asset. | Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images Those more cautious, including the BoE, warn there are risks for the wider financial system including undermining public confidence in money and payments if something goes wrong.  And stablecoins are not immune to things going wrong: In 2022, the Terra Luna token lost 99 percent of its value, along with its sister token TerraUSD, a stablecoin which went from being pegged to the dollar on a $1-1 TerraUSDbasis, to being valued at $0.4. Tether also fell during that time to $0.95.  Other central bankers seem to agree with Bailey’s early caution. The Bank for International Settlements, a central bank body, issued a stark warning on stablecoins in June, saying they “fall short” as a form of sound money.  There are also concerns such coins are used to skirt money-laundering laws, with anti-money laundering watchdog the Financial Action Task Force, warning that most on-chain illicit transactions involved stablecoins. The EU has tough regulation in place for digital assets. The bloc prioritizes tighter control over the market than the U.S., with stricter rules on capital and operations.  That’s in stark contrast to the U.S., which passed its own stablecoin regulation — the GENIUS act — earlier this year, which is much more industry-friendly. Donald Trump, whose family is building its own crypto empire, has described stablecoins as “perhaps the greatest revolution in financial technology since the birth of the Internet itself.”  That’s put post-Brexit Britain in a bind: align with the EU, the U.S., or go it alone?  “The U.K. is a bit caught,” a former Bank of England official who now works in digital assets said. They were granted anonymity, like others in this article, to speak freely. “It doesn’t have the luxury of completely creating a bespoke regime. It can do, but essentially, no one’s going to care.” AMERICAN PUSH For a Labour government intent on deregulating for growth, aligning with the U.S. was immediately a more attractive proposition.  Warnings came from the City of London, Britain’s financial powerhouse, that the government would need to embrace crypto and stablecoin for the U.K. to become a global player. Domestic financial services firms wrote to the government calling for it to align its regime with the U.S., talking up “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to establish the future rules for digital assets.   “Securities are getting tokenized,” said one former Treasury official, now working in the private sector. “Bank deposits are getting tokenized. If we don’t build a regime that is permissive enough [to make the U.K. attractive], then the City’s relevance will diminish as a consequence.”  For the pro-crypto brigade, the BoE has been the main hurdle in achieving a U.S.-style, free-market stablecoin rulebook. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, whose party is currently leading in the polls, accused Bailey of behaving like a “dinosaur.  For the pro-crypto brigade, the BoE has been the main hurdle in achieving a U.S.-style, free-market stablecoin rulebook. | Niklas Helle’n/AFP via Getty Images “The Bank’s really got itself into a twist on this one. From what I understand from people who have been at the Bank, this is coming from the top,” said the former BoE employee quoted above.  “Andrew Bailey has made it publicly clear for some many months now that he is sceptical about the two new alternative forms of money, which is stablecoins and central bank digital currencies,” said a financial services firm CEO.  In recent weeks, however, Bailey and his colleagues have softened their rhetoric as well as indicating a relaxed policy is forthcoming.  Sarah Breeden, Bailey’s deputy governor for financial stability, has repeatedly said any limits on stablecoin will be temporary, and recent reports suggest there will be carve-outs for certain firms. Other BoE officials have also backed away from tougher rules on the assets which must be used to underpin the value of a stablecoin.  A second former BoE employee, who now works in the fintech industry, said Bailey was “under a huge amount of pressure, from the government and the industry. He is worried about looking like he is just anti-innovation.”  The BoE declined to comment. The Treasury did not respond to a request for comment. US interest  A state visit by Trump to the U.K. this fall appeared to help shift the debate.   In late September, the Trump administration and the British government agreed to explore ways to collaborate on digital asset rules.  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Reeves announced that financial regulators and officials from the U.S. and U.K. would convene a “Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future.”  During Trump’s visit, Bessent held a financial services roundtable in London with key figures from industry. “There was a steady slate of crypto attendees there, and the discussion predominantly focused on stablecoins,” said the former Treasury official.  “Rachel Reeves met Scott Bessent and seems to have been told, actually, we’d like you to be much more supportive of … digital assets,” the financial services CEO added.   The U.K. Treasury has been “pretty proactive” in taking meetings with crypto firms and traditional finance firms interested in crypto, in the New York consulate and British embassy in Washington, added the former Treasury official.   The BoE too met with the crypto industry and U.S. politicians, with Breeden at the helm of discussions while she was in the U.S. in October for IMF-World Bank meetings, in an effort to better understand U.S. stablecoin rules.  Last month saw a major olive branch.  A Bailey-penned op-ed in the Financial Times saw the Bank chief recognize stablecoins’ “potential in driving innovation in payments systems both at home and across borders.”   Going further still, Breeden told a crypto conference just this month that synchronization between the U.S. and the U.K. on stablecoin marks a “fabulous opportunity.”  She has heavily indicated there will be more than a slight American influence when she announces the proposals on Nov. 10. “It’s a fabulous opportunity, to reengineer the financial system with these new technologies,” Breeden told the Nov. 5 crypto conference.  “I think a lot of people have observed that it was the U.S. crypto firms that really pushed the dial on getting political will, whereas British firms haven’t been able to secure that,” the former Treasury official said.

ATHENS — Greek authorities made dozens of arrests on Wednesday related to Greece’s spiraling farm fraud case, in an investigation led by European prosecutors. Some 37 people suspected of being members of an organized criminal group involved in large-scale agricultural funding fraud and money laundering activities were arrested, and searches were carried out throughout the country, according to a statement by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. In a snowballing scandal, the EPPO is pursuing dozens of cases in which Greeks allegedly received agricultural funds from the European Union for pastureland they did not own or lease, or for agricultural work they did not perform, depriving legitimate farmers of the funds they deserved. POLITICO first reported on the scheme in February. Several ministers and deputy ministers have resigned over their alleged involvement in the scandal. The EU has already fined Athens €400 million after finding evidence of systemic failings in the handling of farm subsidies from 2016 through to 2023. Greece also risks losing its EU farm subsidies unless it provides an improved action plan on how it will stop funds being siphoned off into corruption. The original deadline was Oct. 2, but this has now been pushed back to Nov. 4. “The Commission is awaiting the submission of the revised action plan and in the meantime, it continues to be in contact with the Greek authorities,” a European Commission spokesperson told POLITICO earlier this month. Wednesday’s operation centered on a criminal network accused of illegally obtaining EU farm subsidies through false declarations submitted to the organization in charge of distributing EU farm funds in Greece, OPEKEPE. According to the EPPO, in the course of the preliminary investigation, 324 individuals were identified as subsidy recipients, causing an estimated cost of more than €19.6 million to the EU budget. Of these, 42 are believed to be involved in this case and are considered current members of the criminal group, says the EPPO. Most of them appear to have no actual connection to farming or producing, according to the Greek and EU authorities. The EPPO said that, at least since 2018, the group “allegedly exploited procedural gaps” in the submission of applications using falsified or misleading documents to claim agricultural subsidies from OPEKEPE. They are suspected of fraudulently declaring pastureland that did not belong to them or did not meet eligibility criteria. They allegedly inflated livestock numbers to increase their subsidy entitlements. To conceal the illicit origin of the proceeds, they are believed to have issued fictitious invoices, routed the funds through multiple bank accounts, and mixed them with legitimate income. Part of the misappropriated money was allegedly spent on luxury goods, travel and vehicles, to disguise the funds as lawful assets. Greece’s anti-money laundering authority is investigating Giorgos Xylouris, a farmer from Crete and until recently member of ruling New Democracy. Xylouris is one of the key characters mentioned in EPPO case files, under the nickname Frappé (“Iced Coffee”), regarding the OPEKEPE scandal. Some €2.5 million was discovered in his bank accounts during a random inspection, the Greek officials said. Authorities found that Xylouris had failed to submit the required financial documentation and could not justify the large sum. Eight vehicles were also identified in his possession, including a Jaguar luxury car. The case file has been sent to the prosecutors to examine possible violations of anti-bribery laws and an investigation is ongoing regarding whether money laundering has occurred.

The city of the euro is failing Europe, according to European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde. After decades of promises, Frankfurt still hasn’t identified a site for a new school to cater to the children of the Eurocrats who work there. That’s left the present European School, overwhelmed by rising demand for its services, on the brink of a crisis, Lagarde warned her host city Wednesday. At the inauguration of temporary container classrooms on Wednesday, Lagarde said it was “embarrassing” that she was not cutting the ribbon on a permanent campus. “We can’t move from container to container to potato field,” she said. The potato field is a reference to an adjacent agricultural plot to which the school hopes to move its sports facilities. The current facilities will have to make way for more containers, as the school is expected to continue growing. But unless something changes quickly, the school will have to stop enrolling pupils by 2028. The European School Frankfurt is part of a network of schools backed by the European Commission, set up so that the children of officials in EU institutions around the bloc can access a guaranteed standard of education in a language suitable for them, free of charge. Outsiders who wish to send their children there can pay up to €8,194 a year in fees. The ESF’s campus in Praunheim, in the north of the city, has been bursting at the seams for years. It was always meant to be an interim home and was initially designed for 900 students, but as the ECB more than doubled in size to include a banking supervisory arm the school now hosts more than 1,600. Student numbers are expected to rise further to over 2,200 by 2032. And pressure on the school is now higher than ever: the ECB’s more than 5,000 staff are now no longer alone, because Frankfurt has attracted two more EU institutions in the meantime: the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), with some 200 staff, and — as of this year — the Anti-Money Laundering Agency, which will have a complement of over 400 by 2027. Before the school opened back in 2002, the German government agreed with local authorities that the city of Frankfurt would provide land free of charge, while federal authorities covered building costs. Federal authorities have long pressured the city to stop dragging its feet and provide a spot. In its pitch to host AMLA, Frankfurt had once again promised a new and larger European school. But unless a solution is found by 2028, the kids of AMLA staff may have to go to local schools: The European school can only use the site of the new containers until the end of 2028, after which the city will reclaim it for a new housing development. AMLA Executive Board member Simonas Krėpšta, who was in the crowd listening approvingly to Lagarde on Wednesday, told POLITICO that his institution has “high expectations” that the city will deliver. He stressed the importance of decent schooling for AMLA to attract staff. “We trust German authorities to find a solution,” he said. Sylvia Weber, a city councillor responsible for real estate and new developments, raised hopes that the search for a new site, now well into its third decade, may soon come to an end. “I am confident to be able to give you answers by the end of the year,” Weber said, pointing to the so-called Festplatz am Ratsweg in the city’s east end as a possible option. However, locals have already protested those plans, warning it will drive out a popular biannual fair, change the face of the district and push up rents. Local politics and interested parties, ranging from sports clubs to plot gardeners, have also scuttled various other attempts to seal a deal in recent years.   So perhaps it is hardly surprising that those attending the inauguration, from school staff, students and parents’ association heads to ECB staff, expressed doubts that Frankfurt will finally get its act together and designate a new plot for the school. Christian Linder, who represents the European Commission on the board of governors of the European Schools, warned that the impasse threatens more than classrooms. “This is very important not only for the school, not only for EU institutions and agencies in Frankfurt, but for the European Union itself,” he said.

The Vatican is facing allegations it used a “skeleton key for money laundering” by illegally manipulating bank transfers. The city state’s former top financial cop ― who was forced out in 2017 ― has claimed that its payroll agency was able to alter the names and account numbers on transactions after they were made, masking the identity of recipients and senders. The implication would be enormous because it would have made it possible for Vatican officials to wire funds to private clients without revealing who they were, possibly enabling unlimited money laundering and violating the most basic anti-fraud rules. The claims come at an awkward moment for new Pope Leo XIV as he seeks to boost the Catholic Church’s reputation after decades of rolling financial scandals and a looming budget shortfall. The Vatican denies all the allegations and people familiar with SWIFT, the organization that facilitates international bank transfers, say what the Vatican is being accused of is technically impossible. Yet, the allegations are being taken seriously because of the credibility of the people making them and because of the Vatican’s history of misconduct.   ACCUSED OF BEING A SPY What adds to the intrigue is how closely the allegations mesh with internal Vatican politics.   They come from Libero Milone, former auditor at Deloitte, a top accountancy firm, who was appointed by the late Pope Francis in 2015 to fix the Vatican’s finances after years of scandal and neglect.  Two years later, he was forced to resign after senior officials accused him of being a spy. He claims he was pushed out because he had identified financial wrongdoing connected to the city state’s former police chief and cardinal, Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who was convicted of embezzlement in 2023 after misusing Vatican funds. The Vatican is facing allegations it used a “skeleton key for money laundering” by illegally manipulating bank transfers. | Giuseppe Lami/EPA Milone first mentioned the apparent existence of tools that could edit international bank account numbers (IBANs) in transfers in the international SWIFT system last month, following the collapse of a case he brought against the Vatican for wrongful dismissal. The Pillar, a Catholic website, followed up with a series of articles signaling that Milone was sitting on a pile of potentially explosive material on practices uncovered during his time at the Vatican and was considering whether to deploy it to bolster his case. Describing the IBAN editing tool as a “skeleton key for money laundering,” The Pillar said that if proven, “the Vatican would likely end up on an international financial black list of the darkest kind, frozen out of the international banking system, meaning no money could come in or out of the city state except in literal, physical cash.” NO BLACKMAIL In a press conference last week, Milone himself corroborated the allegations. However, he refused to provide additional documentation or go beyond what The Pillar journalist Ed Condon reported. “I have a piece of paper which says that they can change the transactions — they can change the name — at any time,” Milone said in response to a question by POLITICO. He also intimated that he had further damaging evidence of malpractice in the city state but again refused to say what, insisting that he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. “I’m not trying to blackmail anyone,” he told reporters. Milone said he first learned of the tool when he was asked to look into it by Cardinal George Pell, an Australian cleric appointed under the same transparency drive. Pell was forced to return to his native country in 2017 to face child abuse allegations, for which he was later cleared. He died in 2023. In a letter addressed to Milone and dated 2016, a copy of which The Pillar shared with POLITICO, Pell said he had been “alerted” to a request from APSA, the Vatican’s payroll agency, “to amend the controls in the SWIFT system,” an action he described as “potentially … illegal.” Milone’s office investigated Pell’s claims, and the auditor flagged them to senior officials including Pope Francis and Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, as well as the Vatican’s chief justice official and the Vatican’s internal watchdog, ASIF. But he received no response from the latter two, which he said had a duty to investigate — part of a broader pattern of institutional resistance to Francis’ reform effort in which the late pontiff was routinely outmaneuvered, he said. ‘COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED’ The Vatican has vehemently denied the allegations. In a statement shared with POLITICO, spokesperson Matteo Bruni said the claims were “completely unfounded” and that APSA had not served private clients in 2016, when the letter was sent.  APSA did indeed shut down its personal accounts in order to exempt itself from oversight by Council of Europe anti-money-laundering agency Moneyval in 2015, but the financial tools might have been used before then, or else used to hide transactions involving private clients processed after that date, Condon argued in a blog post. Bruni also denied any continued malpractice, pointing to audits of APSA by watchdog ASIF and PricewaterhouseCoopers between 2020 and 2024 that found “no anomalies.”  Libero Milone said he didn’t know exactly how the tools would have bypassed these restrictions, but that he saw evidence that transactions were edited. | Fabio Frustaci/EPA A person familiar with how SWIFT operates, speaking on condition of anonymity, insisted to POLITICO that “it is not possible to alter the content of a payment message once it has been sent,” owing to the use of verifiable digital signatures and high-level encryption that applies also to SWIFT clients. Milone said he didn’t know exactly how the tools would have bypassed these restrictions, but that he saw evidence that transactions were edited. GOD’S BANKER Ahead of the May conclave that elected Leo, cardinals complained about a budget deficit that is said to have widened substantially in recent years, thanks to a downturn in donations that accelerated under Francis. The new pontiff was chosen in part because he was seen as somebody who could restore credibility among powerful donors, particularly in the U.S., insiders told POLITICO earlier this year. Recent developments have already restored some confidence. After bumper earnings reported earlier this year by the Institute of the Works of Religion (IOR), the Vatican’s long-troubled investment vehicle, APSA recently recorded €62.2 million in profit for 2024, up from €45.9 million. Milone’s allegations would undermine that progress, and resurface unhappy memories of financial scandals past that date back to the days of Pope Paul XI and John Paul II. In the 1980s and ’90s, Italian magistrates investigated allegations that the IOR had been used to launder Cosa Nostra profits to bankroll anti-communist movements in Latin America and Eastern Europe.  The investigations came after Vatican-connected Milanese banker Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker,” was found hanging under London’s Blackfriars bridge in 1982. Calvi was alleged to have aided the scheme in concert with an array of international interests spanning not only the IOR, but also far-right political and business figures, Italian Freemasonry and U.S. intelligence services.  The Vatican never acknowledged wrongdoing but did admit “moral involvement” for the collapse of Calvi’s bank, Banco Ambrosiano. More recently, in 2023, Cardinal Becciu, a once-powerful cardinal in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, was convicted after being found to have siphoned Vatican funds to a Sardinian charity connected to his family. Becciu was also convicted for his role in a botched London real estate deal that cost the Vatican over €100 million.

ATHENS — A probe into a massive fraud involving hundreds of millions of EU farm funds in Greece is widening to include a former official from the ruling New Democracy party of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. This new strand of the investigation follows a report in the in.gr website that Kalliopi Semertzidou, her partner and at least six other family members received €2.5 million in subsidies from OPEKEPE, the organization in charge of distributing EU farm funds in Greece, between 2019 and 2024. Amid mounting pressure following the report, Semertzidou resigned from her post as coordinator of EU funds and women’s entrepreneurship in New Democracy. She called the allegations “a targeted and slanderous attack with false claims” and also insisted in her resignation letter that her activities were “transparent and legal.” The Greek office of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, or EPPO, is now awaiting findings from the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, which raided the offices of OPEKEPE on Wednesday. The raid sought information regarding EU subsidies received by individuals from the Thessaly region — including Semertzidou, according to officials involved in the investigation. The authorities say that if they find evidence of illicit wealth or a lifestyle that does not align with declared income, they will freeze assets and forward the case to European prosecutors. In a snowballing scandal, EPPO is pursuing dozens of cases in which Greeks received agricultural funds from the European Union for pastureland they did not own or lease, or for agricultural work they did not perform, depriving legitimate farmers of the funds they deserved. POLITICO first reported on the scheme in February. Photos of Semertzidou’s lavish lifestyle, showing her driving a Ferrari and a Porsche, as well as selfies with New Democracy leaders, circulated on social media. The couple says the subsidies received were all legal and that the luxury cars were bought many years before, while they have undergone several audits by authorities in the past and were cleared. Meanwhile, farmers in northern Greece have begun protesting, citing delays in subsidy payments from OPEKEPE. Some payments have been frozen amid ongoing judicial investigations.