Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the European Union’s border agency Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, has prepared to leave, a source told Reuters on Friday, following allegations that the organisation abused migrants at the bloc’s external borders.
Pior Switalski, a spokesperson for Frontex, declined to comment while the agency’s management board met in Warsaw. Leggeri, who was present during the meeting, could not be reached for comment right away.
Last year, the EU’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, opened an inquiry into charges that Frontex, the agency in charge of handling migration across the bloc’s external borders, had violated human rights. The report of the OLAF has not been made public.
European Parliament’s Erik Marquardt, a German lawmaker with the Greens’ faction, said on March 2 that the summary of the report “reveals that Frontex’s management was aware of human rights violations and deliberately avoided reporting them.”
According to one EU source, Leggeri is not the only high-ranking official engaged in the study who has left.
A request for response from Frontex has yet to be responded to.
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