fahrenheit451:322

( Originally posted on May 4 2017 as fahrenheit451:147 ) and the UK government and parliament have been going round in ever decreasing circles since.

The historically moribund European Union  can be viewed as a sleazy,corrupt,kleptocratic hellhole of outright fraud and embezzlement. Amid all the venal hubristic posturing surrounding #Brexit ,once all the vacuous platitudes have been aired and philosophical points have been examined it all comes back down to money.Who pays what to whom and for what and how long for. The current article from the euro observer is particularly instructive on this matter :-

Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in exchange for their access to the EU single market, fund initiatives aimed at reducing social and economic disparities in poorer EU member states.

FOCUS

Hungary and Poland risk losing €1bn in Norway aid row

• 

  Girl visiting the Museum on Wheels, a mobile educational exhibition presenting the history and culture of Polish Jews. The exhibition travelled around Poland as part of an EEA grants funded project. (Photo: EEA and Norway grants)

By ALEKSANDRA ERIKSSON

OSLO, 3. MAY, 09:20

Efforts by Hungary and Poland to control funds directed to NGOs are blocking negotiations over the renewal of a €1 billion Norwegian scheme to support civil society.

The Central European governments want to take funds from organisations supporting women, gay people and the homeless, among others.

Norway has refused to give in to such demands, meaning that negotiations are stuck.

"The situation is very unclear. In the worst case, the whole support scheme could be blocked," said Vera Mora from the NGO Okotars, which administered the last Norway grant scheme in Hungary.
Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in exchange for their access to the EU single market, fund initiatives aimed at reducing social and economic disparities in poorer EU member states.

Norway is by far the biggest donor of the so-called EEA funds, doling out some 96 percent of the money.

Poland is the largest beneficiary, followed by Romania and Hungary.
Under the next scheme, which runs until 2021, Poland stands to receive €809 million, Hungary €215 million.

The funds cover some shortfalls in healthcare budgets and help companies to adopt green technologies. They pay for the upkeep of cultural heritage sites and fund research projects.
Roughly 10 percent of the cash is dedicated to independent support of civic society, a mandatory part of programme.

In Poland, the Law and Justice (PiS) government has formally announced that it would like the money to be channelled through a government body - although they have yet to establish the body.

And frankly my dear that is quite outrageous! especially given that a strand of contentious opinion on #Brexit recommends that the UK go the EEA route to maintaining Single market access once we have actually exited the EU !!

As a rule of thumb, the further east and south you go across the continent of europe the greater the incidence of systemic corruption within EU member states. The scale of it beggars rational belief.It makes the Danegeld tribute paid by 10th.Century English Kings to keep the foreign invaders quiet seem like spare pocket change.

Brexit needs to be done asap, no further negotiations whatsoever, no compromise transitional EEA membership.

Footnote 4 May 2019:-

Brexit by the way, has already de facto been betrayed,annulled,cancelled.

That particular orchestra packed up and went home ages ago,but the dancers continue to dance.

fahrenheit451:291

It's only a couple of blog posts or so ago that I opined that no-one really gives a shit about investigative journalists.

That was in the wake of the news of Marinova's murder in Bulgaria.She was the third investigative journalists murdered in a EU member state in the past 12 months. Galizia in Malta and Kuciak in Slovakia being the other two martyred for the truth and public accountability.

But  " news " corporate MSM news has now moved on to Khashoggi. A sworn opponent of the ruling Saudi Royal family and of its quasi-medieval politics and practices. A writer and polemicist in exile in the USA and habitue of the Washington Post he popped into the Saudi embassy in Ankara to sort out some bureaucratic paperwork. He was consequently tortured,murdered,cut up into pieces and buried.

Even in Erdogan's Turkey,where some 250 professional Turkish journalists are languishing in prison,this act of barbaric impunity was more than one step way too far to shrug off or excuse.And the proverbial merde hit the international diplomatic fan in spectacular fashion.

Khashoggi is now flavour of the month as far as martyred journalists go.

Which is kind of odd since in theory the murder of investigative journalists ought to be treated equally,except we all know that they're not.

Realpolitik and the ranking of nations plays its ineluctable part in determining just how much concern and consternation surrounds any death of any journalist.How do the murders of Marinova,Kuciak and Galizia stack up against that of Khashoggi's ?

Here's something gleaned from Balkan Insight ,3 September '18 :-

" After Bulgaria funnelled 90 million euros from the EU into restoration projects that critics have slated, conservationists dread the results of the next spending spree – and the expected tourist boom has yet to materialise.

Ana Blagova BIRN“It’s weeping – a weeping fortress,” conservation architect Stella Duleva told BIRN, describing the white substance leaking from the newly-restored walls of the 4^th-century Roman fort of Trayanovi Vrata in Bulgaria.

“It had survived 16 centuries, and now it’s been ruined by 2 million euros,” she added.

Sitting atop a mountain pass between ancient Thrace and Macedonia, the fort is one of 120 heritage sites that Bulgaria’s government chose to restore as tourist attractions between 2011 and 2015, using its own money and nearly 90 million euros from the EU’s Regional Development Fund, ERDF.

Conservationists warn that much of the “restoration” work has damaged rather than preserved centuries-old landmarks, without attracting the hoped-for tourism boom. Even one of the scheme’s cheerleaders has suggested that funds have been misused.

Now another tranche of European funding, known in Bulgaria as “Operational programme ‘Regions in Growth’”, is due to become available this year. Under it, at least 100 million euros will be allocated to develop more tourist attractions.

The EU and Bulgarian authorities have conceded to BIRN that lessons need to be learned from the earlier programme, but are still backing the latest spending spree. "


Viktoria Marinova had been busily uncovering widespread fraud and corruption involving EU funding in Bulgaria when she was murdered,apparently by a psychopathic lowlife with a record who was speedily apprehended by the authorities in Germany within a matter of days following Marinova's murder.How convenient.

Kuciak ( along with his girlfriend ) were executed by Mafia hit-men in Slovakia and Galizia was car-bombed in Malta.All of them inextricably linked to various and diverse widespread,institutionalised corruption and fraud within the various member states and between EU member states and the EU bureaucracy itself.

All those prominent political leaders who have spoken out about Khashoggi and demanded to ascertain the  " truth ",all had been previously eerily quiet on Marinova,Kuciak and Galizia.

And so it goes...

fahrenheit451:289

Truth is most people probably don't a give a shit about investigative journalists.Or what happens to them or doesn't happen to them.Perhaps the only time when some random spark ignites the public's interest in investigative journalism is when a scandal is uncovered and wrong doing is exposed to the bright daylight of public scrutiny.

Not all journalists are investigators but it goes with the profession's territory.Born to snoop,to pry,to ask the really awkward questions,to dig, to get their goddamn head blown off if they dig too deep and wind up annoying the wrong people at the wrong moment.

But when all the sums get added up at the close of business,not too many give a damn one way or the other;unless and until,of course events start to impinge too often and bodies start to pile up in plain sight of the civilians who would,if they could choose,rather not know,rather not confront the mire and the blood of Realpolitik as it gets played in real time with real consequences.

Political parties and their activists and partisan commentators who keep up the volume pumped up on any and all matters and all kinds of issues ,for some reason have fallen silent on the recent spate of journalist murders.

The most recent one,just a few days ago in Bulgaria was that of local investigative journalist Viktoria Marinova,who was the authorities say was raped and murdered.She had been looking into fraud and corruption linked to EU contracts. Back in February of this year, in Slovakia, it had been the turn of Jan Kuciak who together with his girlfriend were found shot dead.Apparently Jan Kuciak had dug deep and found links between elements of the Italian Mafia and government officials.

A year ago,in October 2017 Caruana Galizia, a well known and widely respected investigative journalist in Malta died in a car bomb attack.She too had been collecting evidence on EU related fraud and corrupt local politicians.

Both in Slovakia and Malta widespread public protest demonstrations have taken place with politicians and Police officials alike in both countries being placed under intense popular pressure and scrutiny and in some cases have resigned from office.

The common thread of the awarding of EU funded contracts,bureaucratic shenanigans,the involvement of local and national political figures etc.etc. are no mere coincidence.

Fraud,corruption,,nepotism and the involvement of Mafia gangsters in the misappropriation of billions of euroes makes for a very large political cesspit.One that the European Union is wholly incapable of even beginning to deal with.

fahrenheit451:288

There comes a point, and in any event we are in fact way,way past it, where reiterating the same arguments,exposing the same facts,re-heating the same revelations that had once initially shocked us just becomes tedious.

It is axiomatic that within the European Union the further east and south east that you go,the greater the increase in fraud and corruption there is in any given member state. However, even before the annexation,sorry accession, in 2004 and 2007 of the virtual entirety of the economically moribund and socially sclerotic former post-1945 communist states - institutionalised fraud and corruption abounded in stalwart EU member states such as Portugal,Spain,Greece and Italy.

The litany of antiquated,clapped out rustbelt national economies includes those of the former baltic Soviet republics - Estonia,Latvia,Lithuania, parts of the Yugoslav federation -Croatia ,Slovenia alongside Poland,Hungary,Czechia,Slovakia,Romania and Bulgaria.

Many of these never came close to passing all the absurd and ultimately unenforcible standards of governance and financial probity insisted upon by the EU as necessary preconditions to being admitted into full EU membership.

The online euobserver carried a brilliant piece on October 5 2018 highlighting just how unfathomable the murky depths of fraud and corruption still are and that essentially the EU itself is wholly incapable of even beginning to address in any effective and cogent manner.
Herewith an extract.

By PETER TEFFER

BRUSSELS, 5. OCT, 08:48

The leader of Romania's Social Democrat party maintains he is innocent.
But, according to Romania's National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), Liviu Dragnea created an organised criminal group and defrauded EU structural funds.

Romania's fraudbusters had help in their case from the Brussels-based European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf).
"Olaf conducted thorough investigations that we hope will have a strong deterrent effect," said the office's then acting director-general Nicholas Ilett in November 2017, when the accusation of the DNA was announced.

Whether that deterrent effect will occur remains to be seen.
If proven, the Dragnea case - which is still ongoing - would only be one of many examples of the EU's regional support fund being hit by fraud last year.
"Fraud involving EU structural funds remained at the core of Olaf's investigative work in 2017," the office said in its annual report.

By the end of last year, 73 of Olaf's 362 ongoing investigations were specifically on structural funds – making it the largest category four years in a row.
Other annual reports, by the European Commission, also indicate that cohesion funds are a significant target for criminals. Why is that?

Part of it has to do with the fact that regional support simply makes up a large share of the EU budget, Ilett told EUobserver in June, when he was still acting director-general of Olaf.
Some correlation between amount of spending and level of fraud is to be expected. "Of course it is more complex than that. It's also inherent in the nature of the spending," he said.

"There is a system of shared management and that also can constitute a risk. Because there are more people involved in the decision-making process and you can have decisions taken quite locally, where there may sometimes be a risk of a lack of control, and a risk of patronage, nepotism, corruption at the local level," noted Ilett.

Mihaly Fazekas, researcher at Cambridge University, agreed, and pointed to the large amount of discretion given to local and regional authorities in distributing the EU funds.
"If you have a corrupt elite, discretion is good," the researcher told EUobserver. "If you have a friend who happens to build stadiums, you will build a stadium even if the village has no football club which is in the first league or no one watches football."

Paradox

Fazekas is more of an expert on corruption than on fraud, but the two issues are closely related.
He noted that the plethora of administrative requirements for recipients of EU funds have an adverse affect. "While bureaucratic controls try to decrease corruption, inadvertently they make market entry harder – reduce the number of bidders, hence make corruption more likely," said Fazekas.

How much money is actually being defrauded from the annual EU budget for cohesion policy – and whether the problem is increasing – is hard to determine, according to Olaf's Ilett. "It's very difficult to measure over time. It's one of the things we know that we don't know," he noted.

The commission's Protection of the European Union's financial interests reports, or Pif reports, give some indication.
The report on 2017 said that EU member states reported a total of €320m of cohesion policy and fisheries funding as fraudulent irregularities. The 2016 figure was €237m, also for cohesion policy and fisheries combined. In 2015, when cohesion policy was still counted separately, member states reported €477m in fraudulent irregularities.
But Olaf's Ilett said the figures needed to be interpreted cautiously because there is no harmonised approach.
"The trouble with the PIF report figures is that it contains what the member states have declared, and within that there is a category of what they think is fraudulent," he said.

And there you have it - the Anti Fraud office don't know how much has gone missing  or how much is still going missing,where its going missing let alone who might be responsible for it going missing.

We need to get out of this insane asylum asap by way of the door marked Brexit;don't you think?

fahrenheit451:147

The historically moribund European Union  can be viewed as a sleazy,corrupt,kleptocratic hellhole of outright fraud and embezzlement. Amid all the venal hubristic posturing surrounding #Brexit ,once all the vacuous platitudes have been aired and philosophical points have been examined it all comes back down to money.Who pays what to whom and for what and how long for. The current article from the euro observer is particularly instructive on this matter :-

Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in exchange for their access to the EU single market, fund initiatives aimed at reducing social and economic disparities in poorer EU member states.

FOCUS

Hungary and Poland risk losing €1bn in Norway aid row

• 

  Girl visiting the Museum on Wheels, a mobile educational exhibition presenting the history and culture of Polish Jews. The exhibition travelled around Poland as part of an EEA grants funded project. (Photo: EEA and Norway grants)

By ALEKSANDRA ERIKSSON

OSLO, 3. MAY, 09:20

Efforts by Hungary and Poland to control funds directed to NGOs are blocking negotiations over the renewal of a €1 billion Norwegian scheme to support civil society.
The Central European governments want to take funds from organisations supporting women, gay people and the homeless, among others.

Norway has refused to give in to such demands, meaning that negotiations are stuck.
"The situation is very unclear. In the worst case, the whole support scheme could be blocked," said Vera Mora from the NGO Okotars, which administered the last Norway grant scheme in Hungary.
Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in exchange for their access to the EU single market, fund initiatives aimed at reducing social and economic disparities in poorer EU member states.
Norway is by far the biggest donor of the so-called EEA funds, doling out some 96 percent of the money.
Poland is the largest beneficiary, followed by Romania and Hungary.
Under the next scheme, which runs until 2021, Poland stands to receive €809 million, Hungary €215 million.

The funds cover some shortfalls in healthcare budgets and help companies to adopt green technologies. They pay for the upkeep of cultural heritage sites and fund research projects.
Roughly 10 percent of the cash is dedicated to independent support of civic society, a mandatory part of programme.
In Poland, the Law and Justice (PiS) government has formally announced that it would like the money to be channelled through a government body - although they have yet to establish the body.

And frankly my dear that is quite outrageous! especially given that a strand of contentious opinion on #Brexit recommends that the UK go the EEA route to maintaining Single market access once we have actually exited the EU !! As a rule of thumb, the further east and south you go across the continent of europe the greater the incidence of systemic corruption within EU member states. The scale of it beggars rational belief.It makes the Danegeld tribute paid by 10th.Century  English Kings to keep the foreign invaders quiet seem like spare pocket change. Brexit needs to be done asap, no further negotiations whatsoever, no compromise transitional EEA membership.