How a convicted neo-Nazi MEP plundered EU funds

Wednesday 7 October 2020 was a landmark day for Greece. In what was hailed by international media as “the biggest trial of fascists” since Nuremberg, the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn was found guilty of running a criminal organisation, dissolved, and its leadership convicted.

But while the judgment was celebrated across Europe as a milestone victory against the far right, implementing it would soon become an unprecedented headache for Brussels. The reason: neo-Nazi Ioannis Lagos, one of the leaders of Golden Dawn, was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) at the time of his conviction.

Lagos was found guilty of running a criminal organisation among other serious charges, and received a prison sentence of 13 years. But for a period of over 6 months following his conviction, and while his peers were promptly imprisoned in Greece, Lagos managed to live a free life in Brussels, just like any regular MEP. He took part in the Parliament’s legislative work. He gave speeches. He retained his salary and additional allowances. As he publicly stated, he made plans to flee in order to avoid his arrest and extradition.

The fact that during this period Lagos was allowed to retain access to all Parliament resources and funds was often contested. How many of these funds did Lagos take, and what were they used for, were questions the Parliament was not willing to answer. So FragDenStaat filed a lawsuit – and won.

Following the court’s judgement, the Parliament disclosed for the first time the expenses and allowances documents of a MEP: proof of how much money Lagos took from the Parliament and how he made use of Parliament resources for the five months following his criminal conviction. For the documents covering the additional two months up until his extradition in May 2021, we collaborated with Greek FOI organisation Vouliwatch to obtain Lagos’ remaining expenses.

With this information, we reconstruct Lagos’ steps following the verdict of 7 October 2020.

Flights and a steady influx of money, paid for by the EU Parliament

None of the Golden Dawn leaders were at the courtroom the day the party was declared a criminal organisation. Ioannis Lagos was in Brussels on 7 October 2020. As his party was being dissolved, Lagos was delivering a speech in the plenary of the European Parliament.

He had now become a convicted criminal, but on that day he would still be paid his salary, which amounted to € 64,000 a year, plus the extra allowance MEPs receive for their attendance.

Two days later, Lagos scheduled a one-way trip to Athens using the European Parliament’s travel agency to book the trip. On Sunday 11 October, Lagos took a flight from Brussels to Athens, and then traveled to Perama, an Athens suburb. The entire trip was paid for by the European Parliament.

Invoice for trip from Brussels to Athens

On that day, Lagos sought the services of the Parliament’s travel agency again, and booked another one-way ticket for the next day: he wished to take the first flight out of Athens, back to Brussels.

Invoice for trip from Athens to Brussels

Lagos’ trip out of Athens early in the morning of 13 October was also paid for by the European Parliament. Upon arrival, Lagos resumed his collection of allowances from the Parliament.

The next day after Lagos’ trip back to Brussels, the court in Athens announced its sentencing for the Golden Dawn leadership; Lagos was sentenced to 13 years and 8 months in prison. As arrest orders were looming, Lagos continued to collect allowances from the Parliament day after day.

Total amount received by Lagos from 7 October 2020 to 7 March 2021

As the arrest of his peers was taking place in Greece, for the first time since his return to Brussels, Lagos would not attend the Parliament and collect his allowance.

Lagos’ attendance record shows a one-month gap

Lagos’ attendance record shows a gap from 22 October to 23 November 2020 – a period coinciding with suspended parliamentary activities due to the Covid-19 pandemic and part of parliamentary activities having to take place remotely. In an e-mail to the Parliament’s administration, Lagos complained about how this suspension affected his collection of allowances:

“It is unfair for us to have be deprived of the perdiems we are entitled to”.

It won’t be until 23 November that Lagos goes back to Parliament and resumes his collection of allowances. Shortly after Lagos reappeared in the Parliament’s attendance records Greece officially requested the Parliament to lift his immunity. But this process will take five more months, a period Lagos used to plan his escape to a “European country that is willing to grant political asylum to me,” as he publicly stated. But Lagos’ flight plans did not come to fruition and once his immunity was lifted, he was arrested on 27 April 2021, and extradited two weeks later.

While waiting for extradition, Lagos’ continued access to parliamentary funds would enable him to gather over € 28,900 euros in addition to an annual salary of € 64,000. To top his fundraising efforts, during this time, Lagos also asked for money from his supporters on Twitter in order to pay for his legal fees.

The Parliament controlling the Parliament

The lack of transparency and failing accountability around MEPs’ expenses has long been a matter of public debate. Recurrent scandals around MEPs misusing public funds and abusing the system reignite the debate over and over. And yet no decisive action has been taken thus far by the Parliament to guarantee transparency and public scrutiny around how elected representatives make use of public funds.

Instead, control over MEPs’ allowances and expenses relies mainly on the European Parliament’s own administration, via its finance department, DG Finance.

DG Finance has mechanisms in place to control payments both before MEPs are reimbursed for their expenses, and after. But these mechanisms are strained, especially when it comes to controls before reimbursements are made, as payments are numerous (in 2023, the latest data available, the Parliament was processing 15.000 transactions per month only in relation to the reimbursement of travel expenses) and involve many documents in a wide variety of languages.

This puts a limit to what the Parliament’s administration is able to control, as the Parliament itself has admitted. In 2020, the year in which Lagos had ordinary access to Parliament funds in spite of his criminal conviction and pending extradition, the Parliament stated: “The risk of undue payments is a recurring risk for the DG Finance. (…) the lack of resources for more in-depth checks is accepted.”

At the same time, controls after expenses have been reimbursed are also limited. In 2019, the Parliament launched a three-part review of travel expenses in response to “the numerous alerts communicated by the Operational Unit during 2018”. The review, however, was designed to cover a very limited number of expenses: out of all travel, only car journeys of more than 800 km were examined; the second part of the review covered only 40 payments relating to MEPs’ presence during training courses; the third and final part reviewed travel expenses for delegations, covering only six.

Moving forward: the role of the Court of Auditors

Beyond the Parliament, when it comes to institutional control over MEPs’ expenses, there is one body in particular with an important role to play: the European Court of Auditors (ECA).

The ECA is the EU’s auditing body. Every year, the ECA conducts an audit of the institutions’ accounts, including the Parliament’s. On top of these annual exercises, the ECA can choose to conduct in-depth audits, known as Special Audits, where it examines in detail a specific fund or area of EU expenditure. If irregularities of any kind are found during the course of its audits, the ECA refers them to the EU’s anti-fraud agency (OLAF), which then investigates possible fraud or misconduct.

While MEPs expenses technically fall under the scope of the ECA’s annual audits, the ECA’s methodology, which is based on the random selection of samples, makes comprehensive control very difficult and highly unlikely.

For instance, in 2018 the ECA said the amount of sample payments its auditors examined for the Parliament’s part of the budget that includes MEPs’ expenses “ranges between 8 and 25”. In 2018, the Parliament travel agency processed over 185,000 transactions regarding travel expenses.

On the other hand, the ECA has never conducted a Special Audit regarding MEPs’ expenses. This is something FragDenStaat believes should be corrected.

In 2018, the ECA’s internal Journal highlighted the Parliament’s specific obligations when it comes to transparency, stating that “as a democratic representation the EP has the obligation to be an example of transparency and good administration.” Arguably, this is evermore true when it comes to MEPs’ own expenses: publicly elected representatives making use of public funds should require the highest standards of accountability as opposed to being a blackbox.

In face of the Parliament’s insistence on keeping expenses a secret, even as new scandals and court convictions continue to surface, a detailed audit is well overdue and should become a regular exercise in order to guarantee proper oversight.

The ECA’s 2018 publication stated: “Accountability for parliamentary expenditure is a major concern for EU citizens, as illustrated by media reaction to the European Parliament’s recent decision to reject greater transparency in relation to MEPs’ expenses.” It is time for the ECA to take this concern seriously, and for it to take the matter into its own hands.

→ View the document collection