Bulgaria's Public Financial Inspection Establishes 19 Violations in 20 EU-Funded Projects

After inspecting twenty contracts on EU-funded projects in 2014, the Public Financial Inspection Agency has established violations in nineteen of them, BGNES reported.

The information became evident through a letter addressed from Director of the agency, Ventsislav Georgiev to the Bulgarian Parliament, sent on April 20.

According to the text of the letter, violations have been registered in the process of allocation and execution of the tenders, while one concerns remuneration payments on the approved projects.

Out of all irregularities established 5 are in operational program Regional Development, 4 in Administrative Capacity (OPAC), and 2 in Environment. One case of violation each has been established in the programs for development of village regions, fishing, competitiveness, the European territorial collaboration between Bulgaria and Greece, and one in a case regarding the European Refugee Fund.

According to the information in the letter, the inspections were conducted following signals on illegal proceedings during fund allocation and processing. A total of 51 acts have been issued by the state agency demanding an audit with regards to suspicions of administrative violations. Subsequently, the Prosecutor's Office has received a total of 5 reports after the financial audits.

The information was released mere weeks after Prime Minister Boiko Borisov made a plea to media and public officials not to overexpose the topic on the EU-funds abuse.

''After the country has built a massive self-control system, why should we trust mere rumors that are discouraging businesses,'' stated Borisov in early April. ''If you take the official statistics of the EU, you will see that in the process of EU fund implementation there is a certain percentage of financial corrections. Out of all 28 countries, Bulgaria is in the top ten of the good ones, as we only have 1.5% error rate. Our neighbors have close to 40%.''

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