The European Commission (EC) has added 98 new projects financed under its Sapard programme to the debtors list, demanding that the country returns 65 million leva.

The projects have been identified by the European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) and are not part of the 101 projects the State Agriculture Fund sent to the prosecution in late 2008.

The announcement was made after the first meeting of experts from the EC Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development and Olaf with the new team of the Bulgarian Agriculture Ministry that took place on July 29 2009.

The list features 88 companies, the bulk of them in the meat processing business, plus two dairy farms and firms of other processing industries which have received the go-ahead to be subsidised between 2002 and 2009. The most widespread irregularities include the use of second-hand equipment and contracts with suppliers who have set exorbitant prices for the equipment, the Agriculture Ministry said.

At the July 29 meeting, the Bulgarian side requested a one-month period for secondary checks by the Prosecution to remove from the list the companies that have committed technical or administrative violations. European procedures allow a one-month grace period before claiming back subsidies, experts said. The ministry said it hopes to receive a reply to its request on July 30.

The Bulgarian meat and milk processing industry groups laid the bulk of the blame for the violations with the administration, saying it had implemented inadequate control and management. The organisations warned that if law-abiding companies would be forced to pay back subsidies to comply with requirements imposed post-factum, the country’s meat processing industry would collapse.

Simeon Prisadashki, owner of the Sofia-based Josi said; "I don’t know why Josi is on the list given that our projects have been without problems. The only problem is that we have worked with a supplier who, in 2004, was a market monopoly, but seems to have raised suspicions as it is involved in all projects."

The probe into the new batch of 98 projects was initiated by Olaf in May 2009 based on tip-offs. On July 16, director-general Jean-Luc Demarty told Bulgaria’s former Deputy Prime Minister in charge of EU funds absorption, Meglena Plugchieva, that a team of experts of the directorate and Olaf would arrive in Sofia at the end of July to find out why the list of projects with "financial consequences" differs from the list the EU had drafted. In the letter, obtained by Dnevnik, Demarty proposes a project-by-project inspection.

Brussels’ demand concerns the action plan on Sapard funding that was designed to prove that Bulgarian administration could exercise effective control, leaving no room for siphoning off European subsidies. Konstantin Palikarski, the former head of Bulgaria’s Sapard agency who drafted the plan, said that serious violations were discovered during secondary inspections.