The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Supply said that even though Sapard payments to Bulgaria were temporarily frozen – because of allegations of fraud, the beneficiaries of Sapard projects would continue to receive their funding as the Government would pay them. The ministry received a letter on March 7 from the chief of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development Jean-Luc Demarty, saying that payments were being frozen.

At a news conference given by the State Fund for Agriculture (SFA) on March 11 in the ministry, Dimitur Tadarukov, executive director of SFA, said that by December 2007, 3509 Sapard contracts had been signed.

“The total number of projects that had been approved and paid was 1861, for a value of more than 1.38 billion leva. The subsidies ordered and paid in total amounted to more than 637 million leva,” Tadarukov said.

The numbers were also discussed with representatives of the EC Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development and “by all representatives of the monitoring committee and were voted and approved”. Tadarukov said he would make an official request to the EC to allow Bulgaria to pay the annual financial agreements from 2006 in 2009.

Deputy Finance Minister Dimitur Ivanovski said that between the start of the programme and January 31 2008, SFA had received and approved 135 requests for finance from the Sapard agency. “The payments made by this date were for 134 requests for finance,” Ivanovski said.

The total value of payments was over 619 million leva of public financing. After the deduction of incorrectly paid amounts on registered contracts and financing on contracts that had been signed by the European Court but had not been restored in the second year of registration, the actual, completed, admissible public costs spent on Sapard from the beginning of the programme until May 31 2008 would be about 618 million leva. Ivanovski said that between these two dates, Bulgaria had sent 32 cost declarations and applications for payment to the EC for a total of 234.5 million euro. By  January 31 2008, the EC had reimbursed just more than 226 million euro of these costs.

He said that by January 31, debts on 72 projects and 83 irregularities had been registered within Sapard. The total amount of debt, including interest, had reached nearly 22 million leva.

“In his letter Demarty asked that before sending further requests to Brussels, to give them a timeframe during which the OLAF (European Anti Fraud Office) and the Bulgarian authorities could collect any additional evidence of fraud on this measure (Sapard Measure 2: ‘Reprocessing and marketing improvement of agriculture and fish products’),” Ivanovski said.

“The fact that OLAF was conducting this investigation gave us reasons to perform additional audits and checks within Measure Two, but neither the EC nor the national chief had any reason to say that this was effectively stopping the, or a not functioning, Sapard programme,” Ivanovski said.

Kay Mortensen from the Commission’s agricultural directorate said that at the moment the EC was only taking precautionary measures against Bulgaria. Mortensen confirmed that payments to beneficiaries would continue as payment requests could not be submitted to the EC before actual the payments had been made.
Ivanovski said the SFA had money to pay all amounts on contracts that were on schedule.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Supply Dimitur Peychev said the first payments would most probably be in about a month’s time. The official investigation of the auditors was scheduled for May 26, when the EC would make a full report.

According to Tadarukov, OLAF found only seven projects with irregularities out of the total 1861 and this was only thanks to the documentation SFA provided to the European authorities.

The amount that remained to be paid from 2007 was slightly more than 400 million leva, from the annual financial agreements in 2005 and 2006. Within Measure Two, the amount that remained to be paid was 81 million leva, Ivanovski said.