June 1 (SeeNews) - Romania and Bulgaria were the top two countries with the most fraud investigations concerning misuse of European taxpayers' money in 2015, European anti-fraud office (OLAF) said.
In 2015, OLAF concluded 199 investigations into the use of EU funds, involving 23 member states and 26 non-EU countries. These investigations covered the sectors of Structural and Social Funds, agricultural funds, new financial instruments and external aid, OLAF said in its annual report, published on Tuesday.
Out of the total, Romania and Bulgaria generated 45 and 19 investigations, respectively, of which about half resulted in specific recommendations.
OLAF’s overall caseload in Bulgaria and Romania includes a large number of related investigations involving the misuse of funds from the Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD), which supported the efforts of the two Eastern European countries in the pre-accession period to prepare for their participation in the common agricultural policy and the single market, OLAF noted.
Most of the SAPARD investigations were closed with recommendations - in the case of Romania, 83% of the investigations into 12 cases involving SAPARD funds were concluded with recommendations,
while in Bulgaria, this figure was 100% (for two cases).
Romania topped also another list - that of the number of items of information about possible fraud or misconduct forwarded to OLAF in 2015. The country submitted 49 notifications, out of which 11 came from a public source while the rest were generated by private sources. Bulgaria filed 34 cases, of which only two were sent by the country's government institutions.
In 2015, OLAF recommended for financial recovery a total 888.1 million euro ($992.8 million).
($=0.8945 euro)