EU Commission, OLAF Publish Fraud Reports 2009

According to the European Commission report on irregularities in absorption of EU funds for 2009, Bulgaria and Romania are the two countries with the biggest number of violations reported.

The report is published on a yearly basis by the EC's anti-fraud office, OLAF, and comes out together with a Commission report on “Protection of the Financial Interests - Fight against Fraud”.

Bulgaria tops the ranking of member-states owing funds to the Union's budged due to irregularities in absorption, with a staggering EUR 45.4 B, against Romania's EUR 22.7 B at the second place.

Two-thirds of cases from Bulgaria are related to agricultural programme SAPARD, followed by the PHARE reconstruction programme, and the ISPA infrastructure programme. 20% of Bulgarian SAPARD projects were unveiled as frauds, reports OLAF.

The signals from Bulgaria have increased with 134% against 2008. Nevertheless, according to the European Commission this “reflects a better understanding of the obligation to ensure sound financial management following the Commission's efforts to improve the reliability of the national systems“.

Other countries singled out as ranking high in reports of irregularities and fraud are Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

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