EU budget lost nearly billion dollars to fraud
Nearly $1 billion of European Union funds were given out to fraudulent claimants last year, with the biggest concentrations of suspected false claims in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, data from EU investigators shows, Reuters writes.
According to the source, in an annual report published on Tuesday, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) concluded that 888 million euros ($989 million) were probably disbursed to dishonest claimants in 2015, a slight decline from 901 million the previous year.
Among examples of probes into nearly 1,400 fraud allegations was a 1.3-million euro payment to modernize a vegetable chilling plant in Bulgaria, the EU's poorest state. When investigators looked into it, they found the equipment supplier and the factory owner were the same person, who had inflated the price.
Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary saw the biggest concentrations of fraud on the EU in 2015.
In another type of scam, importers of solar panels from China cheated EU authorities of penal import duty by using fake documents changing their provenance.