Audit office points to mistakes in drawing EU subsidies

Prague, Sept 10 (CTK) - More than 27 million crowns were wrongly paid out within the Czech Northeast regional operational programme in 2007-2011, the Supreme Audit Office (NKU) has concluded in its report available to CTK.

The NKU inspectors checked 13 projects worth 373 million crowns and concerning the regions of Liberec, north Bohemia, and Hradec Kralove and Pardubice, east Bohemia.

NKU spokeswoman Olga Malkova said the regional council that chooses which projects will be subsidised and supervises their implementation and financing violated the rule that all projects must be assessed by at least two independent experts.

She said only one expert assessed the technical quality of projects in 2007-09. Based on his expert opinion, the council approved 100 projects worth 3 billion crowns, she added.

Malkova said the regional council did not mention the faults to which the NKU pointed in the past among mistakes when checking the projects underway, although the subsidies should be returned even due to a small error.

NKU noted that a reconstruction project of a monastery in Hostinne, east Bohemia, did not win a subsidy, but when the application was submitted for a second time, it succeeded, although the project remained unchanged.

This shows that the rules for assessing the projects were not observed well, NKU said.