The former management of the border surveillance agency Frontex knew about the illegal deportations of migrants to Greece and even co-financed deportations, according to a damning report whose Der Spiegel publishes excerpts this Thursday.

Frontex was aware from the beginning of these illegal, sometimes brutal, returns of asylum seekers to Turkey, says this still confidential report by the European Office for the Fight against Fraud (Olaf), also consulted by the newspaper Le Monde and the Lighthouse Reports research site. .

“Instead of preventing ‘pushbacks’, former boss Fabrice Leggeri and his collaborators covered them up. They lied to the European Parliament and covered up the fact that the agency supported certain pushbacks with European taxpayers’ money,” summarizes the German magazine.

The investigators’ conclusions had led to the resignation of Fabrice Leggeri at the end of April.

“There have been setbacks incompatible with European law”

The researchers cite testimonies from Frontex collaborators implicating Fabrice Leggeri for turning a blind eye to illegal acts. And they found a written note that referred to the withdrawal of surveillance planes “so as not to be a witness.”

During an official visit to Athens, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that “thanks to the report on Frontex and today’s publication by the anti-corruption authority, there have been several cases (of crackdowns, editor’s note) “.

“Although obviously I cannot verify in detail what is happening in each individual case”, “there have been setbacks incompatible with European legislation”, the minister stated during a visit to the Frontex offices in Athens.

He stressed that “measures were taken immediately (…), today we are all talking about it, so that there are more human rights observers in the place,” he added.