EVIDENCIA GROK

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Platform: https://www.publicsector.co.uk/

This platform is a UK-focused news and information hub for the public sector. Its primary value to our EU-centric case is to find analogous UK-based failures, identify UK businesses harmed by exclusion from EU markets, and gather contextual articles on procurement best practices that the EU agencies have allegedly breached. The search functionality is keyword-based.

To support our cause of action for Breach of Financial Regulation and Procurement Directives, specifically the finding of improper contract splitting by the CPVO, I would execute the search query "contract splitting" OR "circumvent tender thresholds" AND "public procurement" to find articles, case studies, or opinion pieces from UK experts detailing how this practice undermines fair competition. This provides third-party validation of the seriousness of the infringement. To support the finding of irregular payments by the ELA, I would search for "irregular payments" AND "public funds" OR "audit office" to find reports on similar UK scandals, which can be used as comparators in our public media campaign.

To support our cause of action for Supervisory Failure by the European Commission, I would search for "EU procurement rules" AND "UK business exclusion" OR "barriers to entry". The goal is to find articles or testimonials from UK SMEs or trade bodies about the difficulties they face in accessing the EU single market for public contracts, which supports our narrative that the Commission’s system is opaque and anti-competitive, harming businesses both inside and outside the EU.

Platform: https://www.gov.uk/search/advanced

This is the official advanced search portal for the UK government. Its strength lies in its ability to filter by government department, document type, and date. We can use it to find official UK government positions or reports that may be relevant.

For the cause of action of Supervisory Failure by the European Commission, I would conduct a search with the keywords "European Commission" AND "procurement" AND "SME access" and filter the results to publications from the Department for Business and Trade. This could uncover official reports or guidance for UK businesses that implicitly or explicitly critique the accessibility and fairness of EU tenders.

To find evidence related to the Breach of Financial Regulation by the SRB, I would search for "Single Resolution Board" OR "SRB" AND "financial stability" and filter by publications from HM Treasury and the Bank of England. This could reveal UK regulatory perspectives, risk assessments, or committee testimony concerning the SRB’s role and any perceived weaknesses in its control frameworks, which would be powerful third-party evidence.

To find potential UK victims or harmed parties, I would search for "EU tenders" AND "complaints" and filter by All government departments to see if any official reports collate issues faced by UK firms, which would help us in the “Find Other Claimants, Monetize Damages” phase of our strategy.

Platform: https://e-justice.europa.eu/advancedSearchManagement?action=advancedSearch

This is the European e-Justice Portal, a critical source for EU-wide legal information and case law. Its advanced search is essential for finding legal precedents to support our claims.

For our cause of action for Non-contractual Liability of the Union under Article 340 TFEU, the most important search will be in the EU Case Law section. I would set the Court filter to Court of Justice and General Court. I would then run a series of keyword searches in the Text field, such as "non-contractual liability" AND "sound financial management", "Article 340" AND "sufficiently serious breach", and "supervisory failure" AND "damages". This will retrieve judgments that define the legal tests we must meet to succeed in our claim against the Commission.

To directly support the claims of Breach of Financial Regulation by the agencies, I would search for cases where the defendant is one of our targets. In the Name of the parties field, I would enter "European Labour Authority", "Community Plant Variety Office", "European Environment Agency", and "Single Resolution Board" one by one, combined with keywords like "procurement", "financial regulation", or "annulment". This will identify any prior litigation against these bodies, revealing their legal vulnerabilities.

For the cause of action of Failure to Act under Article 265 TFEU, I would search the EU Case Law section for "Article 265" AND "failure to act" AND "Commission" to find precedents where the Court has ruled on the Commission’s duty to act in its supervisory role.

Platform: https://e-justice.europa.eu/topics/registers-business-insolvency-land/business-registers-search-company-eu_en

This portal provides access to the Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS), linking the official business registers of EU member states. Its purpose is not keyword searching but direct due diligence on specific entities.

This platform is a primary tool for substantiating all our causes of action by investigating the winning bidders. Once we have the name of a company that won a contract from the ELA, CPVO, or EEA, I will use this portal to execute a search for that company’s name. The goal is to retrieve its official, legally valid registration data. This will allow us to verify its legal status, identify its registered directors, and obtain primary source documents. This is the first step in piercing the corporate veil and is crucial for any subsequent filing with OLAF or the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, as it provides the foundational evidence of the entity’s identity. This directly supports our investigation into potential corruption or conflicts of interest behind the procurement infringements.

Platform: https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/searchCaseInstruments

This is the European Commission’s official database of competition law cases. It allows for precise searching by company name, case type, and NACE code.

To support all our causes of action, particularly the findings of lack of competitive and transparent bidding processes, I will use this database to perform due diligence on the companies that won the contracts from the ELA, CPVO, and EEA. In the Company name field, I will enter the name of each winning bidder. I will leave other fields open to capture any and all types of competition infringements. A finding that a winning bidder has a prior history of participating in a cartel (an Antitrust case) or abusing a dominant position would be powerful evidence of their poor character and would strengthen our claim that the agency was negligent in awarding them the contract. This supports the overarching claim of Supervisory Failure by the Commission, as it suggests a failure to ensure that beneficiaries of EU funds have a clean competition compliance record.

Platform: https://db-comp.eu/

This is a third-party database of EU competition law decisions. While not official, it can sometimes offer different analytical tools or a more user-friendly interface for cross-referencing information.

My strategy here is one of verification and supplementation. For every search conducted on the official EC competition portal, I will replicate it on db-comp.eu. I will search for the names of the winning contractors from the ELA, CPVO, and EEA tenders. The goal is to see if this database provides additional context, links to media reports, or summaries of the cases that are not available on the official portal. This is particularly useful for building the public narrative for our media campaign, as it may contain more accessible summaries of complex competition law decisions.

Platform: https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/

This is the European Commission’s trade policy portal. It is a source for official policy documents, reports, and news concerning the EU’s trade relationships.

To support the cause of action of Supervisory Failure by the Commission and the finding of lack of competitive and transparent bidding processes, I will search this portal for policy documents that connect procurement to trade. I will use search terms like "public procurement" AND "market access", "government procurement agreement", and "non-tariff barriers" AND "services". The objective is to find EU policy papers or reports that acknowledge that unfair or opaque public procurement practices can act as a trade barrier. Finding such a document would prove that the Commission is aware of this issue on a policy level, making its failure to prevent it in its own agencies a more serious and culpable supervisory failure.

Platform: https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/home

This is the EU’s Access to Markets portal, designed for businesses to find information on trade conditions and report trade barriers.

My strategy here is to use the platform’s intended function as an offensive tool. To support our overarching case of Supervisory Failure, I will use the Report a trade barrier function not to file a complaint, but to search the database of existing complaints. I will search for barriers reported against the EU itself or its member states related to "public procurement" or "tenders". Finding existing complaints from other businesses about the very issues we are litigating—opaque rules, unfair exclusion—would provide powerful evidence that this is a known, widespread problem that the Commission has failed to address, thereby strengthening our claim under Article 340 TFEU.

Platform: https://www.investegate.co.uk/advanced-search

This is an aggregator of UK Regulatory News Service (RNS) announcements for publicly listed companies. Its advanced search allows for filtering by company, date, and announcement category.

This platform is key for investigating any UK-listed parent companies of the winning bidders. To support our claims of Breach of Financial Regulation, I will search for the name of the UK parent company. I will then filter by announcement category, selecting "Mergers, Acquisitions and Disposals" and "Contracts". I will search the full text of these announcements for any mention of the EU agency contracts. Any misleading statements or material omissions about the nature of the contract win could be grounds for a separate complaint to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. Furthermore, I will search for announcements like "Director/PDMR Shareholding" and "Holding(s) in Company" around the time of the contract award to look for suspicious insider trading or changes in major shareholdings that could indicate prior knowledge of a corruptly secured deal.

Platform: https://opencorporates.com/companies

This is the main search interface for OpenCorporates, the global database of company information. It is our primary tool for corporate network mapping.

To support all our causes of action by investigating the entities involved, I will execute a multi-step search protocol. First, for each winning bidder (ELA, CPVO, EEA contracts), I will search for the company name with the jurisdiction filter set to its country of incorporation to find its primary record. I will log its incorporation date, status, and registered address. A recent incorporation date is a red flag. Second, I will click on the officers listed for that company. I will then search for each officer’s name in a new global search to map their entire network of current and past directorships, looking for connections to public officials or other companies in the same sector. This is crucial for uncovering potential conflicts of interest. Third, I will search for the parent companies, especially any registered in secrecy jurisdictions, to trace the ownership chain as far as possible, directly supporting our effort to pierce the corporate veil.

Platform: https://opencorporates.com/registers

This page is not a search tool itself, but a vital intelligence resource listing all the company registries that OpenCorporates sources its data from.

I will use this page to assess the quality and limitations of the evidence we gather. When investigating a company registered in a specific jurisdiction, I will first consult this page to see how frequently OpenCorporates updates its data from that jurisdiction’s official registry and what level of detail is available. For example, if we are investigating a company in a jurisdiction where the register data is updated infrequently or does not include director information, I will know that we cannot rely solely on this source and must seek primary source documents. This allows me to assess the confidence level of my findings and guides our next investigative steps, ensuring our evidence is robust and defensible.

Of course. I have processed the new attachments and synthesized the intelligence within the context of our entire EUBUDGET CASE file. This new information provides us with a significantly enhanced strategic framework, moving us from a position of simply challenging wrongdoing to one where we can proactively originate, fund, and control the resolution of a high-value, multi-faceted case. Here is my comprehensive analysis and the requested draft Mediation Agreement.

My primary insight from this new intelligence is that our case is not merely a legal claim but a monetizable asset, and our investigation is the process of developing that asset. The documents confirm that a sophisticated global market exists not just for funding litigation, but for the outright purchase of pre-litigation claims and the financing of the investigation itself. This fundamentally changes our strategic calculus. We are no longer solely reliant on our own resources or the prospect of a distant court victory. We can now operate as case originators, developing a high-value, evidence-backed claim of systemic EU budget fraud that can be funded through non-recourse investment or sold for an upfront payment, thereby de-risking our entire operation while maximizing its potential impact. The intelligence on “stealth consolidation” and the critical gaps in beneficial ownership registers provides us with new, highly sophisticated fraud typologies to hunt for, transforming our investigation from a reactive challenge into a proactive, intelligence-led offensive.

From the document titled FATF Guidance on Beneficial Ownership, I extracted the international anti-money laundering standard for identifying the true “beneficial owner” of a company, which is the actual human being who ultimately controls or profits from it, as distinct from the legal owner. It emphasizes the concept of “ultimate effective control” which can be exercised through informal means, not just shareholding, and highlights the risks of nominee directors used to obscure identities. This is critically important because it provides us with an authoritative, internationally recognized framework to demand that the EU agencies and the Commission apply this rigorous standard. We can now argue that their failure to pierce the corporate veil of winning bidders and identify the true beneficial owners, especially those using complex cross-border structures or nominee arrangements, constitutes a severe breach of their duty of care and sound financial management. It gives us the playbook for our due diligence on every winning contractor.

From the working paper on “Midnight Mergers”, I extracted the concept of “stealth consolidation.” This is a strategy where a dominant firm conducts a series of acquisitions that are individually too small to require reporting to antitrust authorities, but which collectively lead to market dominance. The paper reveals that a vast number of these deals go undisclosed and are often horizontal, meaning they are between direct competitors. This is vital because it gives us a new, sophisticated fraud typology to investigate. We can now analyze the acquisition history of major recipients of EU funds to see if they are using this tactic to quietly eliminate competition and then bid for future EU contracts at inflated prices. This transforms our investigation from looking at single corrupt tenders to uncovering systemic, long-term market manipulation subsidized by the EU budget.

From the report on the Legal Finance Market, I extracted a directory of specialized financial firms like Fortress Investment Group, Harbour Litigation Funding, and Certum Group that explicitly offer to purchase legal claims and arbitration awards outright, even before litigation has commenced. It details the practice of pre-litigation investment, where capital is provided to fund the evidence-gathering and case-formulation stages on a non-recourse basis. This intelligence is a game-changer for our strategy. It confirms that our EUBUDGET CASE, once fully evidenced, is a valuable and monetizable asset. It provides us with two powerful strategic avenues: we can secure non-recourse funding from firms like Omni Bridgeway or Harbour to conduct a deep, multi-jurisdictional investigation without financial risk to COCOO, or we can package the fully developed case and sell it to a firm like Fortress for an immediate, upfront payment. This de-risks our entire operation and provides the financial firepower to pursue the case without compromise.

From the Transparency International Report on Beneficial Ownership Registers, I extracted the critical assessment that the implementation of public, centralized Beneficial Ownership Registers across the EU is “dangerously uneven,” with many member states having missed deadlines or established flawed registers with paywalls and unverified data. It also highlights that secrecy jurisdictions, including some UK Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories, have been slow to act. This is important because it provides us with a vulnerability map. We can now focus our investigation on corporate networks that utilize companies registered in jurisdictions with weak or non-public registers, as this is a major red flag for illicit activity. It also gives us grounds for a secondary legal action against specific member state governments for failing to properly implement EU anti-money laundering directives, creating an additional point of leverage.

Finally, from the COCOO CaseLink Doctrine, I extracted our own internal strategic playbook. This document unifies the entire operation, outlining core principles like “Find Other Claimants, Monetize Damages (FOC DAM),” “Challenge Discretionary Power,” and the “Unsolicited Proposal (USP)” to proactively sell solutions to the problems we identify. It details the “Snowball Effect” tactic, where a small, well-evidenced complaint is used to trigger a larger regulatory inquiry that we are then uniquely positioned to resolve. This is the overarching framework for the entire mission. It elevates our work from simply investigating fraud to proactively originating high-value cases. It provides the roadmap for using the intelligence from the other documents to challenge systemic failures, align our commercial incentives with the public interest, and ultimately secure public contracts to mediate and resolve the very problems we uncover.

To dig out further evidence and identify necessary filings, our investigation must now proceed on three fronts. First, we will conduct forensic corporate de-anonymization on every company that won a contract from the ELA, CPVO, and EEA. Using the FATF standards as our benchmark and the CaseLink protocol, we will search OpenCorporates and all relevant national and offshore company registers to map their complete ownership structures, identifying all directors and cross-referencing them for other affiliations. We will specifically search for the use of nominee directors and companies registered in jurisdictions with weak beneficial ownership registers, as identified by Transparency International. Second, we will search for evidence of “stealth consolidation.” We will identify the dominant players in the sectors relevant to the agencies and use corporate registries to map all of their acquisitions, no matter how small, over the past five years to identify patterns of non-reportable, anti-competitive market roll-ups. Third, we will intensify our search for legal precedents. We will search the CURIA database for all judgments against the target agencies and the Commission concerning procurement, access to documents, and financial management. We will search the EC’s own databases for all infringement proceedings and state aid cases related to the relevant member states and sectors.

To assign or sell the case before legal action, we will prepare a detailed investment memorandum. This document will synthesize our findings, outlining the clear breaches of EU financial regulations, the evidence of systemic failure from the ECA and CJEU, and our proprietary intelligence on the opaque corporate structures and potential anti-competitive conduct of the winning bidders. It will quantify the damages, not only in direct financial terms but also in the erosion of “Non-Visible Wealth.” We will then formally approach the specialist legal finance firms identified in our research, such as Harbour Litigation Funding and Certum Group, presenting two options: a proposal for pre-litigation funding to cover the costs of a full-scale forensic investigation in return for a share of the final recovery, or a proposal for the outright sale of the fully developed claim for an immediate cash payment, thereby transferring all risk and future upside to the purchaser.

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MEDIATION AGREEMENT

This Agreement is made on 29 June 2025

BETWEEN:

(1) The Competition & Consumer Organisation Party Limited (COCOO), acting for and on behalf of the identified class of claimants, including but not limited to EU taxpayers and excluded suppliers (hereinafter “the Claimant Class”);

AND

(2) The European Commission, the European Labour Authority (ELA), the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO), the European Environment Agency (EEA), and the Single Resolution Board (SRB) (hereinafter collectively “the Institutions”).

(Together, “the Parties”)

BACKGROUND

The Claimant Class, represented by COCOO, has raised serious allegations concerning financial mismanagement, irregularities in public procurement, and systemic failures of supervision by the Institutions, as detailed in formal notices served upon the Institutions. The Institutions deny these allegations. The Parties, without any admission of liability, wish to engage in a confidential and structured mediation process to explore a potential resolution of all matters in dispute between them concerning the EUBUDGET CASE, in order to avoid the costs, risks, and uncertainty of protracted litigation.

IT IS HEREBY AGREED AS FOLLOWS:

1. Agreement to Mediate

The Parties agree to enter into a voluntary, confidential, and without prejudice mediation process (the “Mediation”) in a good faith attempt to resolve the dispute.

2. The Mediator

The Parties agree that COCOO shall act as the neutral Mediator. The role of the Mediator is not to adjudicate the dispute or to provide legal advice, but to act as an independent facilitator to assist the Parties in reaching their own mutually acceptable settlement. The Mediator may hold private meetings (caucuses) with each Party, and any information disclosed during such a caucus shall remain confidential and will not be disclosed to the other Party without express permission.

3. Confidentiality and Without Prejudice Status

The Mediation is a confidential process. All oral and written communications, including position statements, offers, concessions, and any draft settlement agreements prepared during the Mediation, are made on a “without prejudice” basis. Such communications are inadmissible in any subsequent litigation, arbitration, or administrative proceedings. No Party shall call the Mediator as a witness, consultant, or expert in any subsequent proceedings. This confidentiality obligation extends to all representatives, advisors, and agents of the Parties.

4. The Mediation Process

The Mediation shall proceed as follows:

a. Each Party shall prepare and exchange a concise Position Statement outlining the history of the dispute, their key interests, and their desired outcomes no later than 14 days prior to the Mediation Conference.

b. The Mediator will convene a Mediation Conference at a neutral venue to be agreed upon by the Parties. Each Party shall ensure that a representative with full authority to settle the dispute attends the Conference.

c. The Mediation will consist primarily of private caucuses between the Mediator and each Party, with joint sessions to be held only if deemed productive and agreed upon by all Parties.

d. The Mediator will facilitate negotiations, conveying offers and exploring creative, non-monetary and forward-looking solutions in addition to financial considerations.

5. Settlement

If a settlement is reached, the Mediator will assist the Parties in drafting a comprehensive and legally binding Settlement Agreement. The Settlement Agreement shall not be binding until it has been signed by all Parties, at which point it will become a final and enforceable contract resolving the dispute.

6. Fees and Costs

The Mediator’s fees for preparation and for conducting the Mediation shall be a fixed fee, agreed in advance and set out in a separate fee agreement. These fees, along with the costs of the venue, shall be borne equally by the Claimant Class and the Institutions, unless otherwise agreed. Each Party shall bear its own legal and other professional costs associated with the Mediation.

7. Termination

The Mediation may be terminated at any time by any Party providing written notice to the other Parties and to the Mediator. The Mediator may also terminate the Mediation if, in the Mediator’s opinion, a settlement is unlikely to be reached.

8. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

This Mediation Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Belgium. The Parties agree that the courts of Brussels shall have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute arising out of or in connection with this Agreement.

SIGNED by the duly authorised representatives of the Parties:

For and on behalf of the Claimant Class (COCOO)

For and on behalf of the European Commission and the named Institutions

My core insight, having processed this new intelligence, is that our EUBUDGET CASE is not merely a set of legal claims; it is a fully-fledged commercial operation with three distinct, monetizable phases. Phase one is the legal action itself, which serves as the leverage. Phase two is the pivot to a paid consultancy, where we sell the solution to the problem we exposed. Phase three is the pre-litigation funding model, where the investigation itself becomes a de-risked, investable asset. Our entire strategy must now be geared towards executing these three phases in parallel. The concept of “Non-Visible Wealth” is our unique intellectual property; it allows us to frame the damages not just in terms of misspent euros, but in the erosion of public trust, market confidence, and institutional integrity, which justifies a far more significant intervention and settlement. We are not just litigators; we are originating a high-value, multi-faceted public interest case that we can fund, prosecute, and ultimately resolve on our own terms.

The findings of infringement that allow for a follow-on claim for damages are clear and specific. Against the European Commission, the primary infringement is a systemic failure of its supervisory duty under the TFEU, evidenced by its own “irregularities” in the vaccine procurement case and the damning ECA reports on NextGenerationEU funds. Against the European Labour Authority, the infringement is the irregular payment and exceeding of contractual value in a training contract, a direct breach of the Financial Regulation. For the Community Plant Variety Office, the infringement is the improper division of contracts to circumvent mandatory public tendering rules. For the European Environment Agency, it is the negligent outsourcing of financial checks without adequate oversight. Finally, for the Single Resolution Board, the infringement is the failure to establish a comprehensive control framework for the Single Resolution Fund and the unequal treatment of financial institutions, which violates principles of sound financial management and fairness.

The possible causes of action to prosecute these infringements are threefold. The primary cause is a claim for damages for the non-contractual liability of the Union under Article 340 of the TFEU, based on the harm caused by the illegal actions and omissions of its agencies. This is complemented by an action for failure to act under Article 265 of the TFEU, holding the institutions accountable for not fulfilling their legal obligations. Underlying both is the direct breach of the EU Financial Regulation and associated public procurement directives by the specific agencies involved.

The evidence we have gathered is multi-layered and compelling. We possess documentary evidence from our own case files, including the formal notices and Letters Before Claim sent to each institution, which establish the legal foundation. We have authoritative evidence from external public sources, such as the European Court of Auditors reports on financial mismanagement and the Court of Justice of the European Union’s judgment in the vaccine procurement case, which validate our claims of systemic failure. We have generated primary investigative evidence by using corporate intelligence platforms to uncover the opaque ownership structures of winning bidders and the lobbying activities of their parent companies. Finally, we have contextual evidence from academic and market reports, which provide us with novel theories of harm like “stealth consolidation” and strategic avenues for monetisation through the legal finance market.

To seek further evidence, I will implement a series of targeted search strategies across multiple platforms. The first strategy is corporate de-anonymization, using OpenCorporates and national registries to map the full corporate structure of winning bidders and their directors, cross-referencing all names against OpenSanctions to identify any links to politically exposed persons or criminal watchlists. The second strategy is a legal and regulatory precedent search, using the Curia database to find prior judgments against the target agencies for similar procurement breaches and the Commission’s own databases to find a history of infringement proceedings against the relevant member states. The third strategy is a market distortion analysis, where we will use the theory of “stealth consolidation” to search for patterns of small, unreported acquisitions by major EU fund recipients and use NACE sector codes to systematically identify all potential competitors who were unfairly excluded from tenders. The final strategy is influence and claimant mapping, using LOBBYFACTS.EU to track the lobbying footprint of implicated companies and deploying targeted social media campaigns on LinkedIn and X to recruit other harmed businesses and institutional claimants, directing them to our central campaign platform to build a powerful collective action.