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BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA — In 2007, a department of Slovakia’s government decided it needed to bring in outside consultants. So it advertised, but only on the notice board of an official building closed to the public, helping to ensure that a favored firm landed a €120 million European Union-funded contract.
Then another ministry gave €600,000, or about $830,000, of E.U. money that was earmarked for educating the Roma community to two soccer teams. Meanwhile, the same government forked out about €1 million to teach leadership skills— in a cabbage-processing plant.
Money has always gone astray within the vast budget of the 27-member European Union, whether to dishonest farmers or corrupt officials. But, as Europeans face painful austerity measures, a succession of scandals in Slovakia is casting new doubt on how billions of euros in regional aid are spent.
The revelations point to deep-rooted problems within funds designed to help develop poorer regions, which each year account for more than one-third of the bloc’s €120 billion budget.
Officials say money often goes toward worthless work or ends up with politically connected lawyers who excel at drafting proposals for European funding — and get kickbacks through consulting contracts.
Critics say the problems are widespread in the European Union, where there are few checks on the quality of regional programs — known as structural and cohesion funds — which, officials concede, are more vulnerable to abuse even than the bloc’s notoriously generous farm subsidies.
Slovaks, used to the scams needed to get by in Communist days, have a term for it: “tunelovanie” — tunneling to siphon off taxpayers’ money.
But thej may soon find there is less cash to tunnel for.
This week, cash-strapped E.U. governments are seeking to curb a proposed 6 percent increase in the bloc’s 2011 budget, conscious that this will go down badly with voters as governments in France and Greece are raising retirement ages, Spanish civil servants are taking pay cuts and Britain is slashing public spending.
Governments have already begun debating guidelines for 2013-2020 budgets.
“In a climate of austerity, this will be a very serious point,” said Jorge Núñez Ferrer, associate research fellow of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “The E.U. can only defend the structural funds if you can justify them and show that you are not misusing them.”
Many of the scandals in Slovakia, a country of 5.5 million people that joined the bloc in 2004, came to light when a new government took power after elections in June. Some involve national as well as E.U. funds.
“I wasn’t expecting anything positive, but what I found shocked me,” said Zsolt Simon, who became Slovakia’s minister for agriculture and regional development. He said his inheritance from the previous administration was “catastrophic.”
The state secretary for labor, social affairs and the family, Lucia Nicholsonova, described how two soccer clubs each received about €300,000 from E.U. programs to educate a few dozen Roma people. “A bad comedy,” she said — particularly as the clubs are in a region with a relatively small Roma population.
“We have a group of professionals whose main business is to profit from the structural funds,” Ms. Nicholsonova said. “Thej don’t actually do anything. Thej sit in their office and write papers about nothing for a lot of money.”
She said it was “quite a shock for Brussels” to discover how cash had been used.
The new government will “cut off the group of people who were tunneling the structural funds,” she added.
Such comments are unusual in nations that receive billions from the European Union and where politicians worry that honesty can lose them funding. But in Slovakia, the new government is — for now, at least — willing to embarrass its predecessor, aided by a vibrant media and vocal transparency campaigners.
The scandals in Slovakia over the misuse of funds are just part of a much larger picture involving the European Union’s regional program.
Across the Union, €123 billion was invested through the bloc’s biggest fund for regional development from 2000 to 2006, creating an estimated 1.4 million jobs and building 2,000 kilometers of highways, according to the European Commission.
But the European Union’s financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors, found errors, including technical mistakes as well as fraud, in 36 percent of regional aid projects sampled in 2009. It estimated that about €700 million should not have been paid out.
Separately, in 2009 the E.U.’s anti-fraud unit, Olaf, reported 4,931 “irregularities” in these funds, accounting for €1.22 billion — an increase of 109 percent in the cost of questionable projects since 2008. Slovakia, Poland and Estonia, along with one long-established E.U. country — Italy — presented the “highest suspected fraud rates.”
Critics say that weak bureaucracies in ex-Communist countries like Slovakia are a problem.
“What is lacking in regional policy is a check on whether the funds are doing something useful,” Mr. Núñez Ferrer said. “There will always be a strong temptation of politicians to abuse the system, given the large lucrative contracts and weak administrations.”
Oto Hudec, professor of public administration at the Technical University of Kosice, said that from 2004 to 2006, this regional aid brought no significant improvement in competitiveness in Slovakia. Though infrastructure spending was positive, the rest of the aid did not do much for sustainable employment.
“In the common understanding, the funds are not something that is going to support competitiveness,” he said. “It is some extra money from a good uncle who is helping out.”
State paternalism was a familiar feature of Communist life. Now, a more generous uncle has emerged: the European taxpayer. Even Slovakia, a small beneficiary, is to receive €11.7 billion from 2007 to 2013.
The Slovak police are investigating 23 cases of suspected E.U. subsidy fraud, from the past two years. Two have gone on to the public prosecutor. So far there have been no convictions.
Yet money has undoubtedly gone astray, officials say.
Zuzana Polackova, a senior official, sifts through mountains of paper generated by projects bankrolled by the European Social Fund. That is how the cabbage scandal came to light.
One method of “tunneling” begins when a well-connected lawyer drafts a proposal for an E.U.-funded project. The successful client then commissions the lawyer to write an expensive analysis.
“That is worth €21,000,” said Ms. Polackova, pointing to a seven-page document, one page containing the title and another an index and the rest written in large type. She said that even legitimate projects could often be won only by using this system, with the average “bribe” worth 10 to 30 percent of the project cost.
In the biggest scandal to date, a notice was displayed in 2007 on the first floor of a ministerial building closed to the public. The sole bid for the €120 million contract for legal and consulting services to the government came from a consortium of two companies, Zamedia and Avocat.
The co-founder of Avocat, Juraj Hatvany, acted as a lawyer for Jan Slota, leader of the S.N.S., a nationalist party that was then part of a coalition government.
When a pro-transparency group, Alliance-Fair Play, publicized the case, the outcry led to the resignation of two ministers, first Marian Janusek, then Igor Stefanov (who was then briefly rehired as an adviser) and the contract was canceled.
Mr. Stefanov attributed the scandal to the media and political opponents. He declined to explain his resignation.
The European Commission said that where malpractice is detected, the European Union withholds funds, as in this case.
A spokesman, Ton van Lierop, noted that decisions on programs worth less than €50 million are left to national governments because that is what the member states want.
Miroslav Beblavy, a Slovak parliamentarian and former state secretary, outlined several ways open bidding rules were circumvented. These including classifying work as “nonpriority” thereby avoiding any bids, specifying conditions that favor one firm or rerunning tenders won by the “wrong” company.
When in government Mr. Beblavy was pressed to spend funds quickly, he said. Funds not spent two or three years after a deadline expires are lost.
At the office of the prime minister, a spokesman, Rado Bat’o, referred to a €11 million advertising contract under audit because of fears of overcharging, and another, worth €20 million, that financed TV spots publicizing highway construction.
Then there were the companies, funded to increase employment, that bought expensive vehicles but created no jobs. And a €1 billion information technology contract looks like it may be 40 percent too costly, Mr. Bat’o said. The list goes on.
“You have to rebuild the whole construction for using E.U. money,” he said. “From the top — from the ministers and prime minister — to the bottom-level decision makers to the bureaucrats whose job it is to spend E.U. money.”
his article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 10, 2010
An earlier version of this article misstated the amount that the European Court of Auditors estimated should not have been paid out in regional funds. It was about €700 million, not €700,000 million. Because of an editing error, a conversion from euros to dollars in the article was rendered incorrectly when describing a fund earmarked for educating the Roma community. The amount, 600,000 euros, equals about $830,000, not $830 million.By STEPHEN CASTLE
Published: November 9, 2010
Zdroj: The New York Times portál
http://www.nytimes.comhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/world ... ref=europe