The Prosecutor’s Office (PO) announced this Saturday that from January 1 to November 23, 4,631 new investigations into corruption and related crimes were registered, an increase of 28.7% over the same period.
“For the period from January 1 to November 23, 2023, 4,631 new investigations into crimes of corruption and related crimes were registered (which include crimes of abuse of power, harmful administration, money laundering, economic participation in entrepreneurship, theft, malfeasance, unlawful receipt of benefits and trading in influence,” says the deputy’s report, published on the International Anti-Corruption Day.
In 2022, 3,598 requests were received during the comparable period, representing an increase of 28.7%.
Until November 23, 191 charges were filed, a temporary suspension of proceedings was applied in 27 cases, and 1,521 investigations were closed. Regarding the prevention and suppression of money laundering and terrorist financing, from January to November 30, 15,926 communications were received and analyzed, “of which 1,096 were under an obligation to refrain, which already exceeds the 14,393 communications for 2022.”
According to the same document, after taking measures to establish the legality or illegality of banking or financial transactions, 746 cases of suspension of banking operations were established and 746 investigations were opened. The value of suspended operations was €71,027,296.04, compared to €104,116,635.32 for the same period last year, $6,431,232 (11,102,276.85 for the same period last year) and £20,414 (2 912,045.03 for the same period in 2022).
However, the MP stressed that the data relates to September 30 and is not consolidated, meaning that messages received from organizations such as banks, casinos or online betting agencies may not yet reflect all suspended amounts. In the first 11 months of the year, 1,748 complaints were received through the “Corruption: Report Here” application, available on the MP portal. Of these, 492 (28.15%) were provided by identified informants.
“The complaints analyzed during this period, including complaints carried over from 2022, totaling 1,672, served as the basis for a preventive investigation and 1,373 investigations.
The number of investigations launched corresponds to a percentage of about 8.2% compared to the number of complaints analyzed,” he specified. As for the areas in which the reported activities are affected, the largest number of complaints comes from the local administration (524), followed by companies (305) and unspecified legal entities (280).
The MP also reported that 72 complaints had been received related to sports activities, 66 to central government services and 30 to fraud related to European Union funds.