A senior member of the far-right Patriots for Europe in the European Parliament could face an anti-fraud investigation over allegations of millions of misspent EU funds.<\/p>\n
On Friday (24 April), the Brussels-based office of Transparency International campaign group submitted a complaint to the EU\u2019s anti-fraud office, Olaf.<\/p>\n
They want an investigation into Philip Claeys over allegations some \u20ac4.3m were misspent during his time as secretary general of the hard-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group, which dissolved in 2024 before morphing into the more powerful and larger Patriots.<\/p>\n
Claeys now holds the same position within the Patriots, where he oversees an even larger budget when compared to the ID.<\/p>\n
Various media<\/a> last year reported on the allegations, as well as on the launch of a criminal investigation opened by the European Public Prosector\u2019s Office (EPPO), with Claeys denying any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n However, the latest development could potentially add Olaf<\/a> into the case, with demands for the office to assess whether his conduct gives rise to ongoing risks to the EU budget amid reports that similar alleged abuses <\/a>continue within the Patriots.<\/p>\n Transparency International\u2019s director, Nick Aiossa, also took aim at the European Parliament.<\/p>\n He described the institution\u2019s inaction on the case as \u201cincredible,\u201d pointing to an audit report that found the Identity and Democracy group, under Claeys\u2019 leadership and budgetary authority, had misspent \u20ac4.3m.<\/p>\n \u201cI have seen a lot of extraordinary inaction by the European Parliament over the years when it comes to misuse of EU funds. But this one I simply can\u2019t explain,\u201d he said, suggesting they should strip Claeys\u2019s authority to oversee the budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior member of the far-right Patriots for Europe in the European Parliament could face an anti-fraud investigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":920666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,1699,219416,258228,258231,258226,219414,258229,258227,219415,258230],"class_list":["post-920665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-identifier4283","tag-identifier4562","tag-identifier4640","tag-nameeuropean-parliament","tag-namefar-right","tag-namepfe","tag-termcodeeuropean-parliament","tag-termcodefar-right","tag-termcodepfe"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116473595724546812","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}