EPPO arrests 11 in €135 million fuel fraud

Special units stormed a villa in Brandenburg. Customs investigators executed warrants in Poland. Latvian authorities detained suspects. In one coordinated sweep, 11 people were arrested across three EU member states (Tag24).

The operation was directed by the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), the EU's independent body that can investigate and prosecute crimes against EU finances across borders. The case, called "Water into Wine," targets what EPPO describes as an international network suspected of multi-million-euro VAT fraud through diesel trading (EPPO).

Lubricant on Paper, Diesel in Practice

The alleged fraud sat inside ordinary invoices, not hidden trucks at the border. Fuel entered Germany from Poland declared as lubricating oil, a product taxed at a lower rate, then got relabelled and sold as diesel (EPPO, Tag24). The gap between what fuel was called on paper and what it actually was generated the profit.

In an earlier phase, EPPO charged six defendants, alleging that over 3,000 fuel deliveries produced fraudulent VAT deductions of €23.7 million (EPPO). German reporting on the latest raid cited alleged losses of roughly €45 million in VAT and over €90 million in excise tax, though these remain unverified allegations (Tag24). The money comes directly from national treasuries, which means from taxpayers and public budgets.

One Prosecutor, Three Countries

Before EPPO, a case spanning Germany, Poland and Latvia would have required three separate investigations, connected only through slow mutual legal assistance requests. EPPO, created through Council Regulation 2017/1939, changed that. Its prosecutors sit inside national legal systems but work under a single EU command. National officers still raid. National judges still sign warrants. But one office decides that three countries' evidence belongs in one file.

The design targets a problem that costs real money. Cross-border VAT fraud, where shell companies buy goods tax-free across EU borders, charge VAT on domestic sales, then disappear before paying, drains an estimated €12.5 to €32.8 billion from member states each year. Diesel works well for this: high-volume, physically identical across borders, and wrapped in excise categories that can be gamed through relabelling (Europol).

Too Few Prosecutors, Too Many Gaps

EPPO has 182 prosecutors covering 24 of the EU's 27 member states (RTÉ). Three countries remain outside the system, including Ireland. That gap matters. EPPO official Andrés Ritter recently warned that Ireland may attract shell companies used in cross-border fraud, because investigators there cannot use EPPO's direct cross-border tools (The Irish Times). Where EPPO cannot reach, fraud can settle.

Tax data is another bottleneck. National authorities still hold VAT records separately, so EPPO prosecutors cannot always trace a suspicious transaction from one country into the next. The EU Council (where member-state ministers legislate) has provisionally agreed to give EPPO better access to Eurofisc, the EU's network for sharing VAT-fraud intelligence between member states, but final adoption is still pending (Brussels Times). Faster data would let prosecutors follow a relabelled fuel shipment across borders in days, not months.

At end-2025, EPPO reported 3,602 active investigations with estimated damage of €67.27 billion (EPPO). That is the caseload for 182 people.

What Remains Unproven

The public record is thinner than the raids suggest. No breakdown shows how many of the 11 arrests fell in each country. No company names, suspect roles, or seized assets have been published for this wave. All suspects are presumed innocent.

EPPO can now open cases that were far harder to build before. Whether 182 prosecutors, stretched across a continent with 3,600 open files, can turn coordinated raids into convictions is what this diesel case will test.