The misuse and abuse of funds for agriculture in the country, within the IPARD II program, have also been documented by the European Commission.
The commission's working group has found that nearly 36 million euros from the union's support scheme were distributed irregularly. Most of these irregularities belong to the last year with almost 33.5 million euros.
"About 10 percent of cases detected as 'irregular' actually turned out to be fraud. This percentage, i.e. the level of distribution of fraud cases, changed over time, increasing significantly in 2020 at 17 percent and culminating in in 2021 to 20 percent".
The European Commission reports that in total, in the last three years, 52 cases of irregularities with the distribution of funds to farmers have been discovered, 42 of which during the 22nd year.
"The most cases of irregularities were found in seven countries, with Turkey and North Macedonia as the main contributors. However, Albania leads in terms of the highest value spent on irregularities. The cases of abuses from Albania linked to IPARD took the largest part of abuses in value, 33 out of 39 million euros in total.
Due to the irregularities and abuses found, the European Commission has decided to temporarily stop support to Albania in terms of agriculture and rural development.
At a time when the investigations of the European Anti-Fraud Office, known as OLAF, continue, as well as the investigations in SPAK, the IPARD 3 program remains. A few days ago, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development affirmed for A2 that it remains optimistic that the program will to follow soon.
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