A storm is brewing inside the European Investment Bank

Welcome to the newsletter of Follow the Money’s EU desk, with insights from our EU specialists, news from the Brussels bubble, and the latest on our investigations!

This week, we’re diving into the latest fallout from our investigation into the European Investment Bank – and trust us, there’s more to come. We’ve also got updates on the Shadow Fleet and a juicy story about soldiers risking national security by looking for love and sex on Tinder. Stay tuned!

A storm is brewing inside the European Investment Bank

The investigation into the European Investment Bank (EIB) Follow the Money published on Wednesday struck a nerve and is being frantically shared among staff at the world’s largest multilateral development bank, three employees told us.?

What’s the matter? We spent five months investigating the EIB after news broke that former President Werner Hoyer was under investigation for corruption over a one-million-euro exit package for a former employee. Our findings reveal a toxic culture of favouritism that spread during his 12-year reign.

Reminder: The EIB is the world’s largest multilateral development bank, financing mostly big infrastructure projects in Europe. It is likely to grow in the future, possibly financing the EU’s defense spending.?

The real voice of the bank: On Saturday, we received the EIB Voice newsletter, which has been critical of EIB leadership since it started circulating among staff in early 2024. It is sent from an anonymous email address, and EIB management has so far been unable to find out who is behind it.?

Great work atmosphere: EIB Voice is not to be confused with EIB Truth and Friends of the EIB, two other groups anonymously criticising management.

Calvi?o is worse: EIB Voice largely confirms what FTM wrote on Hoyer’s system of favouritism, but argues we should have been more critical of his successor Nadia Calvi?o, who’s “worse”. Those who work with Calvi?o describe the atmosphere as “aggressive, rude, intimidating, impatient, emotional”, according to the newsletter. “They say they’re afraid, she doesn’t accept any opinion.”

We’re not seeing many answers to our story so far. Who used the second limousine of Hoyer? Why did a low-level employee get a €15,000/month flat in London? And more broadly: how does the bank ensure that the best people are appointed to senior positions? And how does it make sure that misconduct is investigated and the people involved are held accountable? It will be up to the members of the European Parliament and the boards overseeing the bank to get to the bottom of these cases – or fail in their supervisory duties, as more information emerges.

Stay tuned this week for more news on conflicts of interest among members of the EIB management committee! And in response to the people behind EIB Voice: our article focused on Hoyer because more information was available. We haven’t seen much on Calvi?o so far, but we surely don’t exclude that may change in the future. Keep the tips coming!

Simon Van Dorpe

Other news from the EU bubble

Sinking the Shadow Fleet

There is, finally, a new package of sanctions against Russia. The main aim? To put chains on the shadow fleet of tankers that transport Russian oil, a key source of income for the Kremlin.?

While EU member states have approved the new measures, the details are yet to be revealed (likely in the coming days). Rumour has is that around 50 oil tankers will be sanctioned, which would make it a lot more difficult for Moscow to use them to generate money to fund the war. However, that would still leave hundreds of tankers untouched, posing serious risks of accidents and environmental damage – as we’ve pointed out.

Together with colleagues across Europe, we are currently diving deeper into the world of money-making and sanction-dodging ships that navigate daily through European waters. To use the words of a former spokesperson of the European Commission: stay tuned!

Jesse Pinster

Pesticides meetings should be announced

A year ago, Follow the Money revealed that the EU had organised a meeting with regulators and the pesticides industry without inviting environmental groups, which included an informal visit to a German Christmas market. One group that would have liked to be invited, the Pesticide Action Network, complained to the European Ombudsman.

Last week, the Ombudsman concluded its investigation and suggested to the Commission that in future, such events should be announced publicly beforehand, and that “all relevant stakeholders in the area of pesticides” should be heard.

Peter Teffer

MEPs cash in on side gigs

Think MEPs are fully focused on serving the public good? Think again. Of all 720 newly (re-)elected MEPs, three in four have some sort of paid side gigs, Transparency International EU found. While many of these are modest public roles with minimal remuneration, others include lucrative jobs for companies lobbying EU policies, like board memberships or consultancy work.?

Shockingly, 14 MEPs earn more from these gigs than their €100,000 parliamentary salary. Side jobs are allowed as long as they do not involve “paid lobbying activities directly linked to the Union decision-making process.” However, the rules around it are vague, MEPs’ disclosures of their activities are often incomplete, and breaches rarely face sanctions.

A solution proposed by some NGOs is to ban side jobs for MEPs entirely. After all, do they really need more than €100,000 a year?

Nathan Domon

Our latest reads

Looking for love and sex on Tinder, soldiers endanger national security

With fake Tinder accounts, Follow the Money managed to track the movements of hundreds of soldiers from countries like the US, Germany and the UK – not just where they go, but also their military base and, sometimes, their home addresses.

Due to a design flaw in the dating app, combined with soldiers sharing a lot of information online, we found that it is surprisingly easy to follow them and obtain personal details about their lives. For foreign spies, it’s a goldmine.

Read this investigation by Sebastiaan Brommersma, Martijn Reuvers, and Dimitri Tokmetzis here.

Why the EU is failing to cut red tape (yet again)

A “simplification revolution” is on the way – at least, that’s what European leaders proclaimed at the latest EU summit. For 40 years, promises have been made to cut administrative burdens for companies in Europe.

A pledge repeated time and again – but never actually delivered. Here are seven reasons why the EU can’t break free from its bureaucratic mess. By Peter Teffer.

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