A mission of the European Anti-Fraud Office's (Olaf) will begin work in Bulgaria on August 25 2008 and will concentrate entirely on checking payments made to Bulgarian companies under the European Union's Sapard pre-accession programme, Bulgaria's EU Funds Management Minister Meglena Plougchieva told Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) on August 24.

The mission will start its work just days after Olaf director-general Franz-Hermann Brüner made a two-day visit to Bulgaria on August 21-22.

Plougchieva said that Olaf would send more missions in Bulgaria in the next few months. These missions will focus not only on Sapard, but on all the other pre-accession and operational EU programmes.

By end-November or early-December, Plougchieva will meet Brüner again to review the progress towards improving Bulgaria's spending of EU money and Olaf's work to stamp out embezzlement. 

For this to happen, Olaf will send its own experts who will closely work with Bulgarian institutions. By the end of the week, Plougchieva will send Olaf an action plan, based on which Olaf can say where and how its experts can be allocated.

On the list of institutions are the National Road Infrastructure Agency (NRIA), the Agriculture Ministry’s payments agency, the prosecutor's office and the Justice Ministry, as well as Plougchieva’s own team.

A German national will be working at the NRIA, and a British national will be sent to Agriculture Ministry's payments agency, Plougchieva told BNR.

On Bulgaria's behalf, up to 500 prosecutors could be involved in the probes, Plougchieva said. Cooperation between Olaf and the State Agency for National Security is also on the agenda of fighting embezzlement with EU funds.

A “black list” of people and companies that will not be allowed to apply for EU funding will be published as well, but only after legislation is changed, she said. Bulgaria was going to use German legislation to model its own laws in this instance, Plougchieva said.