Monday, 23 October 2006
Euro-fraud, year 12
Via Tim, our European friends may not, generally speaking, be convinced by the doctrine of pre-emption, but they're happy to make an exception when it comes to their own Court of Auditors.
The European Commission will today launch a pre-emptive strike against the EU auditor, accusing it, on the eve of publishing its opinion on the EU’s 2005 accounts, of being “unfair”. The European Court of Auditors’ review is expected again to qualify its opinion in relation to large areas of EU spending, but the European Commission will criticise the auditor’s procedures and methodology.
Anger is mounting in Brussels over the ECA’s annual reports, which every year provoke widespread criticism of the Commission’s handling of its finances that are widely believed to be vitiated by error and fraud. Tomorrow’s opinion from the Court of Auditors is expected to be the twelfth year in which it expresses reservations about the accuracy of underlying transactions. Areas of spending from which the auditor is likely to withhold its blessing include parts of the agricultural budget, structural funds and research spending.
In a highly unusual intervention, the Commission will confront the Court of Auditors today and call for changes in auditing methods. According to Mr Kallas [Siim Kallas, EU Vice-Commissioner in charge of Administration, Audit and Anti-Fraud], the Court of Auditors bases its opinion on “small samples of transactions”.
As Tim points out, of course it fucking well does. No auditor goes through every toilet receipt and counts every ballpoint you've claimed to have spent money on. Would you prefer the Court of Auditors to do that next year instead, Mr Kallas? Do you want them, for example, to go through every taxi receipt and restaurant bill run up by your department, line-by-line, souffle-by-souffle? No, I bet you don't, you parasitic dick.
And, he says, the auditor refuses to take account of the recovery of funds by the Commission at the end of a project. Clawback mechanisms allowed the Commission to recover €2.17 billion (£1.45 billion) in 2005 from multiyear programmes, but the auditor says this does not reduce the error rate.
Kallas used to run a bank in Estonia. Did his bank lose millions every year through fraud? And, if so, did the auditor agree to sign off the annual accounts anyway, in exchange for Kallas clawing back a quarter of the shortfall from other areas of the budget? Of course he fucking well didn't. No-one does. A company that is consistently losing huge amounts of money every year through fraud and corruption has a systemic problem and cannot be allowed to continue trading until the problem is resolved. But these rules don't apply to our European masters and betters, and so this is apparently what the Court of Auditors are expected to turn a blind eye to:
“If you lose your wallet and you get it back with the money inside, the problem is over,” Mr Kallas said. “This (perception of widespread error and fraud is highly unfair. The spending of money in the EU is under tight control.”
This is risible, steaming bullshit. Even on the EU's own figures, some £4.5bn of the EU's annual budget is wasted. So it's not like losing your fucking wallet and then getting it back with the money inside, Kallas, you braindead Estonian fuckstick, it's like being mugged coming out of the bank with a wallet full of cash, forced to hand over said wallet, and then having it returned to you two years later with a torn, shit-stained fiver in it, a used condom in the little purse bit where your coins go, and all the credit cards cut into pieces. And for this we are supposed to be grateful. Who cares if someone nicked your car? says Kallas. Look, they left your spare tyre on the pavement! The problem is over! Cunt.
On what planet would a private company which submitted annual accounts that, every year for more than a decade, showed billions of pounds' worth of fraud and embezzlement, get its accounts signed off by the auditors? The Planet of the fucking Apes kept a tighter rein on their banana stocks than these bozos. If you siphoned off money from your employer under the pretext of buying non-existent olive groves in Spain you would be fired on the spot. End of story.
It is suggested by some that things are better than they were. This may or may not be the case. But the amount of money sloshing around the EU is certainly not going to decrease, and this pre-emptive attempt to trash the Court of Auditors is not a very encouraging sign for those who insist that they are serious about fraud. If the EU were a business, it would have ceased trading and be in receivership, its assets frozen, its directors in jail awaiting sentencing. But it's not a business; it's our government, and there aren't any elections coming up when we can fire Mr Kellas or any of the rest of them. So suck it up, citizen, because it's not ending any time soon.
Comments:
<< Home
When you have slimy, corrupt and self serving cock sucking knob jockeys like Mandelson in charge what can we expect?
"The Court found that the vast majority of the payments budget was again materially affected by errors of legality and regularity in the underlying transactions. This is a result of inherently risky transactions and supervisory and control systems that are ineffective in terms of limiting the risk of irregularity to an adequate level." Yes, see what you mean.
for those who might be interested in an non-biased view see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6078982.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6078982.stm
Margot Wallstrom writes about this here:
http://weblog.jrc.ec.europa.eu/page/wallstrom?entry=the_commission_s_accounts
http://weblog.jrc.ec.europa.eu/page/wallstrom?entry=the_commission_s_accounts
BULGARIA...THE MISSING MILLIONS.
THE UNEASY PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN ORGANISED CRIME AND DISORGANISED GOVERNMENT.
The Bulgarian Press is fond using euphemisms for theft, such as "drainage", "embezzlement","irregularity" or "fraud", but it is is all the same thing and I like the word 'theft'. There has been large-scale organised theft from the pre-accession funding in Bulgaria. A group of people were entrusted with the task of spending the money for the public good. They betrayed that trust and diverted the funds instead to their criminal mentors. As fast as the EU funds were arriving at the front door the insiders were shovelling the money to their criminal associates out of the back door! This is, in itself, no state secret and scandal after scandal has been reported in the Bulgarian Press.The reaction to each new revelation, however, particularly from those who bear the ultimate political responsibility, has been less than hysterical, in fact it has been virtually non-existent. Do they want us to think that every case of large-scale theft was unrelated to every other case of large-scale theft and that there was therefore no discernible pattern.... no community of purpose.... no planning?
The European Commission's contribution to Bulgaria between the years 2000 and 2006 totalled about 3 billion Euros. This went to the PHARE administration for economic rejuvenation and the SAPARD administration for rural development; the ISPA fund was for transport and environmental matters. Three funds, three administrations and each of them has been affected by fraud. The Ministry of Finance had obligations delegated to it under the accession treaty to appoint suitable persons to serve in these administrations and to ensure that the money was spent on approved programmes.The Ministry had an obligation to oversee (audit if you will) their work and it had the power to take away this responsibility if they were not performing properly. This was all ideal on paper and appeared to have fraud-prevention as uppermost on everyone's mind. So why did the Ministry of Finance fail to detect even a single theft until years later? Why did it fail to prevent any of the losses?
Before the funds arrived, everything on the surface appeared to be in order when in fact organised crime had already infiltrated the three administrations. What followed was therefore never in doubt. It was as if the funds were a carcass, immediately surrounded and torn apart by scavengers the moment they arrived in Bulgaria.
While the outcome was a foregone conclusion, the criminals did not have it entirely their own way. The authorities have investigated some cases of theft and have even punished some of the lower-order wrongdoers. In the year 2006 alone, TWENTY-NINE cases specifically related to Bulgaria's handling of the pre-accession funding,, were under investigation by the European Fraud Office (OLAF). By the end of 2006 the Bulgarian authorities had investigated 11 cases, three of which had involved the theft of BGN 18 Million or more. Many of the thefts (and much has been written elsewhere) involved the initial movement of large sums into foreign bank accounts, bogus transactions, bogus subcontractors and bogus consultants. Most of the known cases concern the SAPARD fund, but there are investigations into all three.
The story of the office rents is an instructive example of how organised crime worked the SAPARD fund ( let us remind ourselves that this was money intended for farmers). The fund operated for about 6 years between 2000 and 2006. The story of the rents indicates that the drainage started right at the beginning on day one. With the help of some Slimy Creature from the Abyss of Depravity, the SAPARD administration soon found office premises in central locations. SAPARD signed an agreement to rent office space on terms which were onerous. The rent was exorbitant, and the terms included for payment of that rent for 6 years in advance (that is to say, from the criminals' perspective, as much as they could possibly get!). This matter was not revealed by the authorities until after 2006 when the leases were coming to an end. Someone was then dismissed from SAPARD (March 2007) over two leases for "striking an inappropriate bargain". The Government then admitted that this theft had cost the fund BGN 1 Million. No-one has been prosecuted and the admission was to divert attention away from much larger frauds. The 2 leases which were called the "inappropriate bargain" in this case, were reported in the Press as being specifically the leases for the offices in Plovdiv and several smaller towns but I am tempted to imagine that the pattern was repeated nationally (SAPARD had prestige offices in most large towns).
Hugely profitable for the Bulgarian criminal but not so for the Bulgarian farmer!
Other revelations coming to light in 2006 and 2007 also show a pattern of behaviour and that this all started at the outset of the programme. Organised crime had co-conspirators in place within the administrations and were always ahead of the game. Notice would you that the revelations tended to come years after the events.
Did I say "pattern"? O-Oops! Surely the Bulgarian Government's official position is that there is no "pattern'", just SERIAL UNRELATED LARGE-SCALE THEFTS. Multiple wholesale frauds.... YES: pattern.... NO! Officially, it also appears, there are no "missing millions" because the authorities were one hundred per cent successful in recovering the money from foreign bank accounts as each revelation arose (sic). Officially the thefts are ALL now in the public domain, they are not the tip of some gigantic nefarious iceberg (sic). Officially Bulgaria brings to the European Union honest Government with full transparency and accountability (sic).
So I ask myself, mischievously, how early in the SAPARD programme, was it before farmers were told that all the money had already been allocated? Clearly if, hypothetically, 98 Eurocents in every Euro went straight into the pockets of criminals, there was not much left for farmers! Perhaps it was sometime before lunch on the very first day!
Post a Comment
THE UNEASY PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN ORGANISED CRIME AND DISORGANISED GOVERNMENT.
The Bulgarian Press is fond using euphemisms for theft, such as "drainage", "embezzlement","irregularity" or "fraud", but it is is all the same thing and I like the word 'theft'. There has been large-scale organised theft from the pre-accession funding in Bulgaria. A group of people were entrusted with the task of spending the money for the public good. They betrayed that trust and diverted the funds instead to their criminal mentors. As fast as the EU funds were arriving at the front door the insiders were shovelling the money to their criminal associates out of the back door! This is, in itself, no state secret and scandal after scandal has been reported in the Bulgarian Press.The reaction to each new revelation, however, particularly from those who bear the ultimate political responsibility, has been less than hysterical, in fact it has been virtually non-existent. Do they want us to think that every case of large-scale theft was unrelated to every other case of large-scale theft and that there was therefore no discernible pattern.... no community of purpose.... no planning?
The European Commission's contribution to Bulgaria between the years 2000 and 2006 totalled about 3 billion Euros. This went to the PHARE administration for economic rejuvenation and the SAPARD administration for rural development; the ISPA fund was for transport and environmental matters. Three funds, three administrations and each of them has been affected by fraud. The Ministry of Finance had obligations delegated to it under the accession treaty to appoint suitable persons to serve in these administrations and to ensure that the money was spent on approved programmes.The Ministry had an obligation to oversee (audit if you will) their work and it had the power to take away this responsibility if they were not performing properly. This was all ideal on paper and appeared to have fraud-prevention as uppermost on everyone's mind. So why did the Ministry of Finance fail to detect even a single theft until years later? Why did it fail to prevent any of the losses?
Before the funds arrived, everything on the surface appeared to be in order when in fact organised crime had already infiltrated the three administrations. What followed was therefore never in doubt. It was as if the funds were a carcass, immediately surrounded and torn apart by scavengers the moment they arrived in Bulgaria.
While the outcome was a foregone conclusion, the criminals did not have it entirely their own way. The authorities have investigated some cases of theft and have even punished some of the lower-order wrongdoers. In the year 2006 alone, TWENTY-NINE cases specifically related to Bulgaria's handling of the pre-accession funding,, were under investigation by the European Fraud Office (OLAF). By the end of 2006 the Bulgarian authorities had investigated 11 cases, three of which had involved the theft of BGN 18 Million or more. Many of the thefts (and much has been written elsewhere) involved the initial movement of large sums into foreign bank accounts, bogus transactions, bogus subcontractors and bogus consultants. Most of the known cases concern the SAPARD fund, but there are investigations into all three.
The story of the office rents is an instructive example of how organised crime worked the SAPARD fund ( let us remind ourselves that this was money intended for farmers). The fund operated for about 6 years between 2000 and 2006. The story of the rents indicates that the drainage started right at the beginning on day one. With the help of some Slimy Creature from the Abyss of Depravity, the SAPARD administration soon found office premises in central locations. SAPARD signed an agreement to rent office space on terms which were onerous. The rent was exorbitant, and the terms included for payment of that rent for 6 years in advance (that is to say, from the criminals' perspective, as much as they could possibly get!). This matter was not revealed by the authorities until after 2006 when the leases were coming to an end. Someone was then dismissed from SAPARD (March 2007) over two leases for "striking an inappropriate bargain". The Government then admitted that this theft had cost the fund BGN 1 Million. No-one has been prosecuted and the admission was to divert attention away from much larger frauds. The 2 leases which were called the "inappropriate bargain" in this case, were reported in the Press as being specifically the leases for the offices in Plovdiv and several smaller towns but I am tempted to imagine that the pattern was repeated nationally (SAPARD had prestige offices in most large towns).
Hugely profitable for the Bulgarian criminal but not so for the Bulgarian farmer!
Other revelations coming to light in 2006 and 2007 also show a pattern of behaviour and that this all started at the outset of the programme. Organised crime had co-conspirators in place within the administrations and were always ahead of the game. Notice would you that the revelations tended to come years after the events.
Did I say "pattern"? O-Oops! Surely the Bulgarian Government's official position is that there is no "pattern'", just SERIAL UNRELATED LARGE-SCALE THEFTS. Multiple wholesale frauds.... YES: pattern.... NO! Officially, it also appears, there are no "missing millions" because the authorities were one hundred per cent successful in recovering the money from foreign bank accounts as each revelation arose (sic). Officially the thefts are ALL now in the public domain, they are not the tip of some gigantic nefarious iceberg (sic). Officially Bulgaria brings to the European Union honest Government with full transparency and accountability (sic).
So I ask myself, mischievously, how early in the SAPARD programme, was it before farmers were told that all the money had already been allocated? Clearly if, hypothetically, 98 Eurocents in every Euro went straight into the pockets of criminals, there was not much left for farmers! Perhaps it was sometime before lunch on the very first day!
<< Home
