Corruption investigations against former EIB President Werner Hoyer

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The former president of the European Investment Bank, Werner Hoyer, is under investigation for corruption, abuse of influence and embezzlement of EU funds. Hoyer described the allegations as “absurd and unfounded”.

The investigation into 72-year-old Hoyer, a German economist and former state secretary in the Council of Ministers who headed the EU bank for 12 years, is being led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which prosecutes misuse of EU funds.

The EIB is the EU’s lending institution and the world’s largest multilateral development lender, with financing volume of over EUR 500 billion.

During his two terms at the bank, Hoyer played a key role in repositioning the bank around a greener agenda while fending off calls for greater risk-taking. In December, he was succeeded by Nadia Calviño, a former Spanish deputy prime minister, at the end of his second term.

In response to questions from the Financial Times, Hoyer said: “The allegations against me are simply absurd and unfounded. I now expect them to be fully investigated and clarified and call on the EIB to cooperate fully with the EPPO. I am also fully cooperating with the EPPO and am demanding that they fully clarify the matter.”

The case is one of the most high-profile brought by the EPPO – which, like the EIB, is based in Luxembourg – since it began operations in 2021.

The public prosecutor’s office announced on Monday that the EIB had lifted the immunity of two former employees so that they could be investigated by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office on suspicion of corruption, abuse of influence and embezzlement of EU funds.

Hoyer’s lawyer Nikolaos Gazeas said the former president had “expressly asked for his immunity to be lifted.”

Gazeas said the subject of the investigation was the severance package of a departing EIB employee, an agreement signed by the EIB President.

“From a legal point of view, it is important to know that the legal requirements for the EPPO to initiate a criminal investigation are very low,” said Gazeas. “It is therefore not unusual from a legal perspective for the signatory of an agreement to also become the subject of an investigation. My client was never involved in the negotiations on the employee’s resignation.”

EU officials enjoy immunity from legal proceedings unless this immunity is waived by the management of the institution.

Calviño informed the bank’s board that the EPPO was investigating her predecessor, a person familiar with the matter said.

Hoyer steered the bank through the aftermath of the euro debt crisis and positioned it as the “greenest multilateral bank in the world” by promising to phase out lending to fossil fuels and invest more money in climate protection.

Hoyer once described the EIB as an institute that had grown “more or less unnoticed in the forests of Luxembourg” over the past sixty years.

“Sometimes I’m surprised that political leaders don’t realise what a tool they have in their hands,” he told the FT in 2019. “It’s a political tool. It serves a political purpose.”

He vehemently defended the bank’s first-class credit rating and was reluctant to use the EIB’s full financial firepower in response to crises ranging from Covid-19 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A spokesman for the bank declined to comment on whether Hoyer was among those under investigation. He added that the EIB would “fully cooperate with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office on this matter as required.”

The EIB will also allow the public prosecutor to search its premises and archives in Luxembourg, the EPPO said.

By lifting the immunity of the two former employees, “it will be possible to collect all the necessary evidence – whether incriminating or exculpatory – to fully clarify the facts under investigation,” the EPPO added.