Polish railway officials suspected of EU aid theft
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WARSAW, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Polish prosecutors have detained 32 people, including senior State Railways (PKP) officials, who are suspected of stealing millions of euros from European Union aid funds, police said on Monday.
Organised crime investigators in western Poland said a scam involving some PKP directors, chiefs of its subsidiary firms and sub-contractors may have siphoned off tens of millions of zlotys in EU funds earmarked for upgrading the rail infrastructure.
It was believed to be the first large-scale embezzlement of EU funds in Poland, which joins the bloc next May along with nine other countries.
"We expect new developments in this probe and plan more operations of this kind. I therefore do not want to detail the flow of funds," said Jerzy Jakubowski, chief of the Poznan branch of the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Police suspect that some firms which won contracts for the modernisation of a major east-west railway line took payment for fictitious work certified by PKP supervisers and government inspectors.
The local news agency PAP quoted Poznan prosecutor Miroslaw Adamski as saying his office had so far charged three people after interrogating them on Sunday. Twenty more suspects were due to be questioned, he said.
The scandal has raised a question mark over the ability of Poland's weak administration to supervise the way billions of euros in EU aid are spent despite the efforts of the European Commission, the EU's executive, to control the process.
The EU has granted Poland some five billion euros ($6.0 billion) in pre-accession aid since the country applied for EU membership in the early 1990s. The funds have been used to build roads, water treatment plants and industrial projects.
Poland, the biggest of the 10 new members, will receive about 12 billion euros in aid from the EU's 2004-2007 budget. Link
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WARSAW, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Polish prosecutors have detained 32 people, including senior State Railways (PKP) officials, who are suspected of stealing millions of euros from European Union aid funds, police said on Monday.
Organised crime investigators in western Poland said a scam involving some PKP directors, chiefs of its subsidiary firms and sub-contractors may have siphoned off tens of millions of zlotys in EU funds earmarked for upgrading the rail infrastructure.
It was believed to be the first large-scale embezzlement of EU funds in Poland, which joins the bloc next May along with nine other countries.
"We expect new developments in this probe and plan more operations of this kind. I therefore do not want to detail the flow of funds," said Jerzy Jakubowski, chief of the Poznan branch of the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Police suspect that some firms which won contracts for the modernisation of a major east-west railway line took payment for fictitious work certified by PKP supervisers and government inspectors.
The local news agency PAP quoted Poznan prosecutor Miroslaw Adamski as saying his office had so far charged three people after interrogating them on Sunday. Twenty more suspects were due to be questioned, he said.
The scandal has raised a question mark over the ability of Poland's weak administration to supervise the way billions of euros in EU aid are spent despite the efforts of the European Commission, the EU's executive, to control the process.
The EU has granted Poland some five billion euros ($6.0 billion) in pre-accession aid since the country applied for EU membership in the early 1990s. The funds have been used to build roads, water treatment plants and industrial projects.
Poland, the biggest of the 10 new members, will receive about 12 billion euros in aid from the EU's 2004-2007 budget. Link
posted by BEING HAD at 5:01 AM
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