ARRESTS IN BULGARIA’S FISHERIES AGENCY OVER SUSPECTED MISUSE OF EU FUNDS

In the early hours on 25th of October, the Anticorruption Unit of Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office arrested the head of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Agency, Yancho Yanev, a staff member and a representative of a company, which received EU funding through the agency. Arrests also took place in the cities of Bourgas, Sofia and Yambol.

The three were detained for 24 hours. Charges are expected to be pressed against them by the end of the day. 13 investigative teams carried out search-and-seizure operations in various premises. The investigation went on for several months and was connected with alleged use of false data by companies, which received European funding.

The spokesperson of Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office, Roumayna Arnaudova said that documents are checked in the State Fund Agriculture in order to identify whether higher level officials were involved in the scheme or not. She said that the investigation was into alleged misuse of EU funds and false data, which justified payments of EU funds under various European programmes.

The Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture manages a fisheries programme that has a budget to the year 2020 of 113 million euro, of which 88 million euro comes from EU funds. The funds are supposed to be used for upgrading the fishing infrastructure, promoting innovation, collecting marine debris. The previous programming period had serious problems with delays in absorbing the funds. The Director of the Agency for Fisheries Yancho Yanev was appointed to the post in 2014 after a series of scandals in the agency related to its poor functioning.

A curious detail is that 5 months ago, a new deputy minister was appointed in the Ministry of Agriculture, particularly responsible for the Fishery programme. However, at this stage the ministry has not given any comments.

The collection of evidence and interviews with witnesses is on-going.