EC Will Ask Sofia for its Money Back if no Sentences are Passed for the EU Funds

The spokesman of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) Alessandro Buttice stated, that the office expected convictions for frauds with European funding because otherwise European Commission would ask Bulgaria for its money back, "Dnevnik" informed.

In a separate statement Buttice said, that the work of our judicial system "is still in question because it is often noted that cases are dropped without cogent enough arguments". The spokesman emphasized that OLAF is particularly interested in the trial against the group, known as "Mario Nikolov - Lyudmil Stoykov".

He illustrated the chance for Bulgaria to get back the money from the projects with a violation in the case of corn export from Greece to Belgium. "There were data that the corn was form a former Yugoslavian Republic but Greece insisted, even on a high political level, that the corn was Greek. The case went to court and gave the EC reasons to ask for its money back because every member state, including Bulgaria, has to be careful" the OLAF spokesman said.

According to him, since that summer there had been a couple of right steps and one of them was forming a special unit in the prosecutor's office for investigating EU Funds frauds. Besides that Fund Agriculture had informed State Agency for National Security for a lot of suspicious projects for some of which it had already been confirmed that the firms, indicated in the papers did not exist, Buttice explained.