Galați: The European Public Prosecutor’s Office indicted six defendants on 26 October 2026 in an EPPO tugboat fraud case that centres on about €7 million of EU funding for two vessels on the Danube. Prosecutors from the Cluj-Napoca office sent the case to the Iași Court, where four public officials of the Lower Danube River Administration face charges alongside one individual and one company accused of helping the scheme.
The money came from the 2014 to 2020 Large Infrastructure Operational Programme, and EPPO estimates the damage to the EU budget at roughly €7 million. The two multi-purpose, ice-class tugboats were meant to support navigation on the Lower Danube. According to the office, the tender specifications demanded requirements typical of seagoing ships rather than inland waterway tugs, which narrowed the field of bidders and favoured one company.
The EPPO tugboat fraud allegations go further than the tender. Prosecutors say the four officials signed final acceptance reports that falsely stated the requirements had been met. The contract capped the vessels’ draught at two metres, yet the boats delivered in 2021 draw 2.6 metres. As a result they can only operate safely at high water, which limits their use on the Danube, especially when river levels fall.
Penalties in the EPPO tugboat fraud case are heavy. If convicted, the defendants face between three and ten and a half years in prison. The EPPO announcement does not name any of them, and all are presumed innocent until a court rules. No trial date has been announced, so the case now moves into the Romanian court system.
The EPPO tugboat fraud case shows how procurement design can carry fraud risk long before a contractor delivers anything. Specifications that look technical can hide a preference for one supplier, and acceptance reports are the last line of control before public money is paid out. Auditors have long advised national authorities to test requirements against the real use of an asset, here a river tug that has to work in low water.
The indictment also forms part of a busy week for the office in Romania. A day later EPPO’s Bucharest office indicted three people before the Bucharest Tribunal over 237 farm and young-farmer projects financed through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, with estimated damage of €3.5 million. Both cases underline that the EU’s prosecutor now handles routine misuse of structural and rural money rather than only headline cross-border schemes.
For Romanian taxpayers and Danube shippers, the outcome will decide whether two vessels bought with EU money ever deliver the capacity promised. For the Union, the EPPO tugboat fraud case is a test of whether prosecutions can deter similar tender design in other member states.
