60% Of The Scrutiny European Fraud Cases In Bulgaria Were Rejected Or Terminated

60 percent of the European fraud cases which were scrutinized in Bulgaria, were rejected or terminated by the prosecutor's office. This was found in a special report by the European Court of Auditors on the fight against fraud with funds from the European Cohesion Funds over the last five years. Apart from Bulgaria, European auditors have also scrutinized cases in France, Hungary, Greece, Latvia, Romania and Spain.

The most recent report by the European Court of Auditors shows that although there has been progress in the recent years, EU Member States are still not doing well with fraud in spending on Cohesion Policy. The countries themselves, including Bulgaria, believe that the measures they are implementing to combat fraud with EU funds are good enough. However, according to European auditors, these conclusions are "too optimistic".

The report says that the departments that control the spending of EU funds in the country didn't estimated the risks of fraud right and that  in some cases they defined them as low and didn't start scrutinizing at all.

The prosecutor's office has rejected or terminated 60 percent of the investigated cases. For several years, the European Commission has launched a project to implement the so-called integrity pacts - a contract between a contracting authority and economic operators bidding for public contracts that they will abstain from corrupt practices and will conduct a transparent procurement process. According to the Court of Auditors' report, these pacts are showing positive results in some countries, but Bulgaria is not among them.

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