Fraud against European subsidies is well

Fraud increases but is a good sign. This is the ironic conclusion drawn Wednesday by the European Commission in a report dedicated to the illegal use of EU funds.

According to Brussels, the increase in cases of mismanagement is not due to the proliferation of financial crimes in Europe, but better tracking by member states for fraud.

You'd think they were particularly pugnacious this year. Three times as many cases of suspected fraud were detected in the use of agricultural subsidies and twice more for regional grants from 2008. The sums involved amounted respectively to 13.3 million euros and 109 million euros.

Same trend towards aid allocated to countries applying for accession, including the amount of suspected fraud increased from 13 to 57 million euros in 2009.Bulgaria alone has 92% of suspected fraud in the management of a fund dedicated to the modernization of its agriculture. Anomalies in the invoices or purchase orders, payments in cash, big difference between the estimated price of an investment and actual cost … a body of evidence exists to detect the rogue actions.

France, a very good or very bad student?

France is characterized by a number of suspicions of fraud very low. The country has seen 20% of farm subsidies between 2006 and 2009 – which is considerable – but reported only 11 cases of alleged fraud, against 25 for its Belgian neighbor that affects a much leaner about 0.3% of agricultural budget over the same period.

Again, the result can be interpreted in two ways: either France demonstrated exemplary management, or it does not endeavor to transfer cases at issue in Brussels No fax pay day loans. Last summer, Le Parisien had raised such a hare revealing hundreds of millions of euros of aid unduly paid to producers of fruits and vegetables.

France declares little fraud as it says little irregularities. In the latter case, there is no real desire to harm (omission of an invoice for example). In 2009, the country has reported that 127 irregularities in Brussels on agricultural subsidies, which is four times less than Spain.

"We have no evidence but the fact is that France is still reporting a low number of defects in comparison with other member states.The European Commission and the Agency for Combating Fraud Office (OLAF is a kind of European financial police, ed), does not conduct audits in Member States. We must therefore assume that their reporting is accurate and reliable, "says one side of the European Commission.

Despite these shortcomings, the work of Olaf has identified some emblematic fraud. A company based in Luxembourg is ordered to reimburse for example 2 million euros of EU funds have placed in an account offshore instead of investing in the recruitment of a hundred people. In late June, a Bulgarian was sentenced to 12 years in prison for falsifying invoices: he pretended to buy new machines for receiving EU aid. The machines were actually purchased used, which enabled it to illegally gather 7.5 million euros.

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