BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s former foreign policy chief faces corruption charges along with two others arrested this week in a fraud probe, prosecutors said Wednesday, the latest scandal to hit the 27-nation bloc.
The arrest of Federica Mogherini, who led the bloc’s foreign affairs service from 2014 to 2019, could damage the bloc’s international image as it seeks to exert influence in negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. The EU has been urging Ukraine to address rampant corruption.
The arrests were made on Tuesday after Belgian authorities raided the offices of the European Union’s diplomatic service in Brussels and a Bruges university. Mogherini now serves as president of the Institute of Europe, a prestigious European research institution.
The European Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement that senior staff at the academy and senior European Commission official Mogherini were detained at its request and questioned by Belgium’s federal judicial police.
“The charges relate to procurement fraud and corruption, conflicts of interest and breach of professional secrecy,” the prosecutor’s office said.
The three men were not considered flight risks and were released, the office said.
As the EU’s top diplomat, Mogherini oversees Iran nuclear negotiations and leads efforts to improve long-standing tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, among a range of other foreign policy and security issues.
Prosecutors said police searched the suspect’s property, several buildings at the academy and the headquarters of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s equivalent of the foreign ministry and located at the heart of the EU institutions in Brussels.
No outside actors or countries have been named in the investigation so far.
Mogherini said in a statement that she “clarified” her position to investigators on Tuesday.
“I have full confidence in the judicial system and I believe the correctness of the college’s actions will be determined,” she said.
Mogherini’s lawyer, Mariapaola Cherchi, told The Associated Press that her client was “transparent, clear and calm” during the 10-hour interrogation. She said she believed “on the basis of such a clear interrogation, there will be no tension on either side” and Mogherini will be acquitted.
The college said it would cooperate with the investigation and “remains committed to the highest standards of integrity, fairness and compliance in academic and administrative matters.”
The European Union’s independent public prosecutor’s office has said it has “strong suspicions” of fraud in the EU Diplomatic Academy’s 2021-22 tender for a junior diplomat training program. Former European Commission Vice-President Josep Borrell manages the EEAS.
The amounts involved are relatively small. In establishing the EU Diplomatic Academy, the EU allocated 1.7 million euros ($1.98 million) to cover expenditures on the training project from July 2024 to June 2025.
The corruption case against Mogherini is the latest to hit a European institution.
In 2022, a cash influence scheme known as “Qatargate” was revealed that involved high-profile center-left EU MPs, aides, lobbyists and their relatives. Qatari and Moroccan officials have been accused of paying bribes to influence decisions. Both countries deny involvement. No one has been convicted or held in pretrial detention, and prospects for trial are unclear.
In March, several people were arrested in an investigation related to the Chinese company Huawei for allegedly bribing EU lawmakers.
Last year, an aide to prominent far-right EU lawmaker Maximilian Krach was arrested in a separate case. German prosecutors accused the aide of being a Chinese agent. Krach, who later moved to the federal legislature in his native Germany, has denied knowledge of the suspicions against his former employee.
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Petrekan reported from Paris. Associated Press writer Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report.
