{"id":417488,"date":"2025-09-12T03:58:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T03:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417488\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T03:58:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T03:58:12","slug":"not-another-farm-fraud-slovaks-face-heat-over-eu-funds-for-fake-guesthouses-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417488\/","title":{"rendered":"Not another farm fraud? Slovaks face heat over EU funds for fake guesthouses.\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThose audits identified deficiencies in the proper functioning of its CAP governance systems. Therefore, DG AGRI applied financial corrections for the financial years 2019 to 2021 to protect the Union\u2019s financial interests. DG AGRI also asked the Slovak authorities to address the root causes of those deficiencies and continues to follow the situation closely,\u201d it said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

European interest\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tom\u00e1\u0161 Zdechovsk\u00fd, a Czech member of the European Parliament who led a Committee on Budgetary Control mission to Bratislava<\/a> in May and spent months gathering evidence on suspicious cases, said the embezzlement of EU funds in Slovakia was \u201csystematic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve collected over 300 examples from Slovakia that show how, over the past 10 years, EU money has been consistently funneled to certain groups of people. These groups inflate the prices of all the contracts to enrich themselves,\u201d the conservative lawmaker said, adding he had reported those 300 cases to the European Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office (EPPO), OLAF and the European Commission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey draw the funds not for public benefit, but for private use. Like renovating their own homes or buying trucks and other things that have nothing to do with what the money was meant for,\u201d Zdechovsk\u00fd said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The PPA responded that it has \u201cestablished control mechanisms\u201d and that the right of every current or former employee to report corruption \u201cis in no way restricted and can be exercised with full confidence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPPA guarantees that any beneficiary who does not comply with the conditions of any project will be obliged to return the financial resources,\u201d the agency added.\u00a0
\u00a0
EPPO, which spearheaded the probe into the Greek farm fraud, said it was \u201cin the process of verifying numerous allegations with a view to determine if it can exercise its competence in these cases under the applicable legal framework.\u201d It added that it was \u201cstill too soon to share any more information.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

EPPO\u2019s prosecutor for Slovakia, Juraj Novock\u00fd, told the Denn\u00edk N daily paper<\/a> last month that the office has been investigating dozens of cases related to the PPA and that in some cases, criminal prosecutions are already underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn specific cases, charges have already been brought against certain individuals. I firmly believe that we will be able to review and investigate the package of several dozen cases we received within a reasonable timeframe, and once we have our findings, we will certainly inform the public,\u201d Novock\u00fd said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThose audits identified deficiencies in the proper functioning of its CAP governance systems. Therefore, DG AGRI applied financial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[3971,78414,2575,2000,299,5187,1699,6644,349,6566,133828,2558],"class_list":{"0":"post-417488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-common-agricultural-policy-cap","10":"tag-corruption","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-farmers","16":"tag-fraud","17":"tag-robert-fico","18":"tag-slovak-politics","19":"tag-slovakia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115189324447741658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}