the city researches have shown the island is void to sensibly sees or to population plans to turn it into a recreational park. have since been shelved. it's now a candidate to join european emerald network of protected areas. there is still hope for these authors and that the teacher like this will inspire the human neighbors to cherish them or risk losing them forever. robin 1st year walker al jazeera tbilisi. ah, this is al jazeera, these, you top stories. the un has suspended all 8 flights into ethiopian tinker. i region ass off to you and claims for was to turn back because of gum. an asteroid was the 4th day of air raids this week on the to grand capital mckayla or un humanitarian

flight that departed addis ababa. this morning was burst forced to turn back. in the midst of it by ought to asterix began in the cabin. i can confirm that the government was informed of that site where it took off. as of course, all kurt will say confirmed that the fight was forced to turn back in mid air because of the events on while we're still ascertaining all of the facts in relation to this events are obviously banned about what has taken place today and what it means monitoring operations in northern moving forward. you know, isolation says it fairs must atrocity crimes and me on laws. thousands of troops gather in the north of the country. the un special rubber to also warn the military government has engaged in probable crimes against humanity as well as with crimes. the u. s. says they will seek information from israel off to designated 6 palestinian civil society groups as terrorist organizations. as well as the keys

them funnelling money to an armed group leaders as a european union summit say they're extremely concerned about the growing number of migrants crossing from better bruce, which is not a member you is accused minx, minsk of what it's called, state sponsored smuggling the number of new corona virus cases continues to rise in russia. it's reported a record number of deaths for the 4th day in a row president vladimir putin is ordered russians to stay away from work for a week in a bid to control the outbreak. china has also putting in place restrictions to deal with outbreaks in several parts of the country with western regions including the capital. beijing have closed public venues. i'm limited transportation. there's been violence in pakistan during demonstrations by supporters of a bond group, its members that demanding the release alita i gave as you headlines nice continues,

often talk to out is there the world is warming and green lynn's ice sheet is melting, which is changing everything from sea levels to the way people live and now even exposing the remnants of a cold war past greenland. the melting of the frozen north on al jazeera, ah, financial crimes of increasingly become a great concern to government world wide. they represent a serious threat to the development of national economies, best stability and sustainability. the european union is a single market of $27.00 countries. come while it was formed officially in 1993. it took its members states 25 years longer to agree on the creation of a common public prosecutor's office. is responsible for investigating prosecuting

and bringing charges against those accused of crimes against the financial interests of the you. the european public prosecutor's office officially started operations on june 1st of this year. but some of its member states including poland, hungary island, denmark, and sweden remain outside of the agreement. hungarian justice minister judith volga, says it's a question of serenity. the european public prosecutor's office is led by laura kawisi, but without full support of all you men the state. how much authority will it have to do its job and what challenges will cover she face as the eas 1st, that she prosecutor, the head of the european public prosecutor's office law, recover? she talks to out there. ah, european chief prosecutor laura kawisi. thank you for talking to out there. i have to say a came a somewhat of a surprise to me that it took 25 years to actually oh,

and the european public prosecutor's office. why did it take so long? it was about the negotiations between the member states and to find the the best way to regulate. because indiana, we speak about 22 different member states with 22 different legislations. and it was difficult to find a come on the way to organize this european public prosecutor office, but the, it's the, the world 3rd largest economy. what were the problems that needed to be overcome? surely financial fraud must have been one of the key issues. yes, because the if you investigate fraud the involving johan, so full of over 10000 euros or cross border to be 80 for the voting damage of both 10000000 euros. but also corruption only landed on the morgan ice crowns related to these financial frauds. but it's important to say that the baseline estimate in each year, it's that more than $50000000000.00 euro,

the revenue that it's lost every year in the whole of the, your so this means that we needed to have this european public prosecutor office. but why did it take so long? i still don't really understand if it was so important, despite the fact that you said, you know, 22 countries you had to negotiate with. surely there was a common ground that could have made this earlier, or was this political? i'm a prosecutor for me. it's very difficult to comment what happens during the political negotiations for me, it's important that if people started it's activity 100 days ago, more than 100 days ago. so we started the 1st of june and now we have started to investigate these crimes that falls under our jurisdiction. you are a prosecutor, you with the romanian national anti corruption director. it's now the level of corruption in the public sector in romania does remain very high in 2020 corruption perceptions, indexed by transparency international, listed romania as scoring 44 out of

a 100 and ranking 19th in the europe in union and 69 globally. not a great statistic, but what do you bring to the table? i'm here to speak about the european public prosecutor office, but if you speak about the specific member states on the board, the corruption, i have to say that the not on the plan, the statistics are the only one more important. because when we speak about the combat inc corruption, it's not important just to put the people behind bars or to contain them. it's also important to prevent under i think when we speak about corruption, we have to take into consideration these 2 main important fields prevention, an investigation related to the cases that were investigated in my previous positions that are public statistics. so i prefer to comment about the activity of the european public prosecutor office. one of them is going to be dealing with your own government, a government actually fight. how's that work?

well, i sent a complaint to the european court for human rights on the judgment of the european court. was that the, the way how the i was fired was not so fair and they broke my from them on to the right. now, what are the main challenges the europe faces than talk to us about, i mean, you talked earlier about the fact that, you know, you've got to deal with 22 members states. so what are the big challenges other than, as you mentioned earlier across the board activity? well, it's important to say that for us, as the single prosecutor office acting the 22 member states as the single supranational authority. if i would make a company's i'm, it's like a federal law or dory d. o we, the real challenge is to ensure coherence on the sense of belonging to the european public prosecutor office while embedded in the national system. because we have a complex structure, we have prosecutor,

european prosecutors of central level in luxembourg. but we have the europe delegated prosecutors, water embedded in the national systems, and they have full prosecutorial powers. so this is the 1st, the, the 1st challenge. and also we have different challenges related to the existing judicial cross border cooperation mechanism. because not all the member states participate to the e p p. o, and we have to act differently. we have some rules to apply when we speak about the participating member states and there are 22 and also different routes when we speak about the non participating member states to the e p. p. o, and there are 5 countries in this relation. now laura, one of the things, the european union across the board has been accused of is layers and layers of bureaucracy, paperwork, and strings, basically trying to anything done. now your job for financial fraud means that

you're going to have a lot more oversight than say, other bureaus or do you think you have a direct connection enough to be able to investigate thoroughly and quickly? well, as i said, we are a single prosecutor office and what is so interesting about the p p. o is the fact that we are very flexible, structured. so we have the ability to investigate cross border criminality in 22 member states of the u without cumbersome, more to legal assistance, formality. we have immediate access to all the information in the case is registered in 22 member states. and we, we are in a unique position to establish connections between case is in different member states. and maybe it's better to give you an example. so recently we have a case in one of our case with v a p for chrome system. the estimated that much is an $80000000.00 euros. there are 6 countries invoice. so we

perform house searches, unfroze acids in 5 member states, the more tenuously, instead of months, it took us weeks to get this organized. so in fact of the, of, of most of the measures assigned were finalized in less than 3 weeks. and this is a make busy because without having a, b, b o, we cannot do that. so a prosecutor. now let's take an example for gender money will call your colleagues in france, they will establish what they need and they share information. and they, they work in the case without having a very cumbersome procedures to follow. i mean, you paint a very rosy picture of the european commission actually recently blocked you from hiring the people that you say that you need to be able to successfully prosecute financial fraud. investigators, tech guys, people like that. you said that actually i'm being blocked from hiring the people i

need. so can you do what you say you can do? well, oh, it's about the budget and it's about what to do. we want to achieve with the pee, pee, or do we want to have a really independent definition of august? the 2 shows or we just want to have a new office saying that we have a new european used to show. so for us, it was very important to have, you know, resources to gain our goals. and this is why we ask for the european commission last year to increase our budget. we get so needed a budget to around 45000000 euros, but we need to more, we have asked to have the possibility to hire more stuff. and we didn't have these so disapproval. so we were in the situation that we have to return several 1000000 euros to the european commission because we couldn't use those money for the

frontier. thinks i prefer to spend money to, to hire more resources instead to i don't know, buy flowers or thanks for the, for the office. but in order to be efficient and to fight with the real criminality, we need to have resources, especially human resources. because as i said, we have a case management system. so we have an electronically, a system where we have all the cases there. we have access to all the information in 22 member states, and we need to have analyst to connect the dots to identify the cross border payment ality and more important. we need to have financial experts to be able to recover the damages and to increase the level of recovering the damages in the members. and in order to do that, we need to have more more stuff. we'll talk to me about the types of criminality you're facing them. what are the, the big ones? is it simply government officials miss spending money or is it stealing?

is it corruption? well, we have different types of crimes based on our duties diction. we have a very few cases, are we to corruption it because they are related to the financial froze. but the most of the cases that we have related to the fraud, and we have a case that involves higher damages as i already gave you. an example, more than 80000000 euros, we have cases with the images that more than 100000000 euros with the crimes were committing 6 or 7 member states. and now having a p o on having immediate access to all the information we open to investigations that possible in future will be connected with the old 22 member states. so in this moment, our target these to investigate cross border criminality, an organized crimes groups. when you say organized crime groups,

a lot of that money is been spent by organize criminal associations and this is fairly well documented in providing and getting giving bribes in order to receive protection from people like yourself. are you following the money higher up the chain or is it just commonality you're interested in? no, a for us is very important to follow. also the money to recover the damages because based on my previous experience, i saw that sometimes the criminal preferred to spend some time in prison instead to lose their money. so, but with the people now we have the possibility to launch strategic strikes against organized criminal groups. because let us be clear, they are our ultimate target, they laundry money throws us to sophisticated webs over the these. they are infiltrating on the stores in the legal economy. they are infiltrating and

corrupting institutions, all levels. so with a p p o. now we can be more efficient and investigated this type of good crimes. laura, it's going to be, is going to come as a surprise to a lot of people that organize criminal gangs can get access to you money. how does that happen? just give us a case exam. well, i think it was not a, but the answer is easy. we didn't have it deal. and usually the, the investigators, even if they were a prosecutors off police officers, they want to focus in the criminality that are, that was committed in their member states. and not all the time. they had the sponsibility to find the information about the activities that were committed to abroad. so this will change with the bill because we can have a direct contact. we have, we are a single office, we have prosecutors in 22 different member states. so for example,

2 weeks ago we are, we're opened an investigation, a norm member states, immediately the prosecutor from that member states court, the other colleagues to see if there are links between his case on the other case, is that what did you start? he found out that there are links on to now we can march the cases. we can put all the cases in one big case and we can investigate it very easy. also a bigger chief month having a b, b o is the fact that we have this electronically, system case management system. and we can immediately identify all the connections between different uh persons or different legal entities that are investigated. and the system flag you that there are connections between different cases that are registered in different member states, because this was one of the main issue that exists. so now for the 1st time,

is that by consolidating investigations in a single supranational 30 days, we can obtain an overall view of the crime in our jurisdiction so we can identify them all to solve that on the so in the sco context, cases have already come to live in which low for months, agencies from different member states would conduct the parallel investigations into the same complex without knowledge of each other. so now is different with the p p. o. but laura, a lot of european tax pose who fund european union, frankly, are going to be surprised that the one safeguards put in before surely as a criminal organization, i should not be able to get access to funding. however, i'm getting it. all european tax payers being defrauded themselves because the european public prosecutor's office didn't exist. it's very difficult to say that there is a different leaks, but i can say that the, it will, there were

a lot of differences between the member states before having a p p o. because for example, the number of the investigations was a very different. it was a very different level of political will to identify today that to detect the identified this crime. it was a different approach between the prosecutor offices and the police full investigate disc type of crimes in some amber states to investigate the frauds with the money was not a priority. now with the people, this will be changed and it was not any, let's say, a strategic approach of these phenomena. now, laura, the pandemic has provided you with a particular challenge. it's a very new office for any been around since the be the 2021. the middle of 2021 rather now handling recovery packages have to be delivered quickly when money is

being delivered that quickly there are sometimes let's say, short cuts or at least easing of restrictions, regulations which can lead to fraud and corruption. but there's a lot of money is a $100000000000.00. how are you going to keep an eye on all of that money and make sure that it is corruption free that it is criminal for a while i hope that we will get more budget because the budget of the people in this moment. it's around the $49000000.00 euro, so we have to defend this huge amount of money with the stuff that we have and with the smaller budget. but in the end, we have to keep in our mind that more money, more flexibility means or higher risk to have more frauds. and we already registered a few cases related to the funding mika situations. for example, in italy together. got that. if you nance out based on the request of the iep,

you'll have more than 11 millions for smuggling personal protective equipment and for committing i graduated from the against her health care facility. so we already have some cases. it's important for us to be able to establish priorities in our activities and to use all our resources. now laura just talked to me about aggravated fraud. i mean, that sounds like something that should have been caught way before the european public prosecutor's office should have gotten involved. they should have been caught by the italians themselves. why wasn't it? well, this is one all of the example of the cases that we have. it's an important part of the c pain to the e p. o. on do we have a relationship? we already started to have working arrangements with those specialized prosecutor office and we will have in future with god that the finance on we've got to be they have a huge experience in dealing with this type of crime. but it's important to,

to, to take into consideration that the organized groups are not national anymore. so they use to move their money in the different member states. they are used to, to work in different member states. and this is why it's so important because now we have a p p o, but also it's all important to work together with the national authorities. now is the e. u by setting up the european public prosecutor's office using you is political cover. for example, it would be very easy for the you to say, actually we have your opinion, public prosecutor's office, that's a box text. and so we're doing something wrong, corruption. but if they're not giving you the money that you need, how serious is the european commission? all they serious about your office. i cannot comment on this. i will give you some statistics in the 1st 3 months of e. p. p. o. we already processed more than 1700 crime

reports. we started 3 more than $300.00 investigations and many more are still under the evaluation. and there is already an estimated damage to the budget of point, a 4500000000 euros in those activity that are under our investigation. so only in 3 months we discover damage is that more than a 4 and a half 1000000000 euros, but we have a very small budget. so this is why i said, if we want the tiger or if you want the pipe r p, this is that in the end the politicians should decide. and me as a european cheese prosecutor, my duty is to underline what we need to ask for the budget to explain why we need the budget. but in the end, the politicians are those who the side and hall should have this responsibility to

decide what a p p, o should be a strongest tuition or just another institution are in you. now let me just read you a quote from one of the german green m e p. daniel from there of in commission the commission is, has so far not been serious about protecting the rule of law in your commission. president, us live on the land must now decide either she fights with us for the rule of law, or she gives into pressure from poland and hungary and continues to do nothing. is he, you serious about protecting its own money and usually do not come on to what the politician what the politicians sent. so i will not come on what the politicians are, the ones that decide where you are with the budget, the policies and decide what sort of strategy you have. you have to deal with these people. why when you comment on their, on their words? well, we are prosecutors, we are a technical level and her, you know, if there is

a need depend on the situation. but indeed, when we speak about the independence, we have to take into consideration the budget. and we have to take into consideration that also the budget of the institution when we speak about judiciary, when we speak about the prosecutorial office, is related to the independence. now we have a regulation will set who has to approve the money. and as i said, our job, it's to ask, but the indian, they will decide if they really want to respect the independence of if you feel or not. now you've talked about your successes in the past, but let's talk about the future of the p. p. o, where would you like to see your office go? my i think my main goal in man mandate would be to, as i said, to have a strong keep your independent, efficient. but more important to when the thrust of the citizens in our activity for me, this is the main goal because if your are efficient,

the people trusting you. if that's the case them, why are poland, hungary island, denmark, and sweden remaining outside of the p, p. o. in the future, would you like to see those countries get in and why? at the moment, only in march, this is a political decision and i think they should explain why they are not in, but i hope that in future we can corporate with our colleagues, our prosecutor colleagues from dismembered states inside of the e. p. p. o may be our activity will convince them that they should, they should join. but the hunger injustice may say unit vargas said it's a question of sovereignty. clearly, you're ruffling some feathers. well, as i said, the e p. p. o, it's a single supranational authority. and so there is no obligation for the members days to be in, but if they are in they, they should. org and they should do everything that is necessary for

e p or to be to be efficient. so i cannot comment on the declination of the minister of justice from hungary, european public prosecutor laura commercial. thank you very much for talking to al jazeera. ok. thank you very much for the interview. ah. on counting the cost, the g $20.00 death release deal, which was supposed to help poor countries, but ended up lining the pockets of private investors. also how to mom for goods is leading to arrive in force and child labor. and from exporting co time to cannabis columbia's ambitious to self medical marijuana. counting recalls on al jazeera, ah, i've never seen so much devastation, more experienced how quickly every thing can change. as the current of ours pandemic savaged the events in india became much more than just story.

0, one was affected. we couldn't keep the people we cared about ally and there were times on air when i had to hold back tears. but every day i was driven to convey the connect of trauma to make sure that despite the high numbers, we didn't forget that every single death represented of families want us to moment and helen most suffering could have been avoided. i became a journalist to tell the story of what is happening, but also shows the wider context. i'm elizabeth coronel. mm hm. we keeping our distance because it's actually quite dangerous. ambulances continued to arrive at the scene of the explosion in spite. i still don't feel like i actually know enough about what living under fascism was like. unequalled

broadcasting, so no snap in august night he was born. a happy al jazeera english proud recipient of the new york festivals broadcaster of the year reward for the 5th year running. the climate has changed every year for millions of years, decades of talk, but little action. it's all about distract from korea. confuse great. smoke and mirrors the shocking truth about how the climate debate has been systematically so furtive, the oil industry was a main bank roller for opposition to contact the campaign against the climate. do you think that's a bad thing more to to a different spheres? absolutely. on all disease foster clearings and now taking over what used to be pristine forest, where giant trees once too tall and cheap and see you scroll. conservationist say they are yes. warming with ego, tim, bloggers and porches. 4 years ago, the government is sitting in the on east,

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