The European Union has not been properly monitoring the potentially fraudulent use of cash sent to Ukraine, MEPs have said.
In its 2022 report published on December 5 about the protection of EU funds, the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee warned that mechanisms tracing financial aid sent to third-party nations were insufficient. It said the bloc was running the risk of its cash being used for purposes other than intended.
Representatives highlighted that funds being sent to Ukraine have apparently been particularly vulnerable to fraudulent misuse.
“The resources allocated for Europe’s response to the war in Ukraine are not adequately monitored and controlled,” the report says, adding that the European Commission must impose more checks and controls on aid deliveries to ensure they do end up with their intended recipients.
It also anticipates the further risk of Ukrainian cash misuse through the Instrument for Pre-Accession assistance (IPA), with the aid platform reportedly seeing a peak of irregularities in 2022.
With Ukraine likely to receive IPA aid as it comes closer to joining the EU, MEPs have urged the EC to ensure the correct usage of the cash, which it describes as “paramount for the efficacy and effectiveness of the accession process”.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko appears to have publicly turned on the country’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and warned he will "pay for [his] mistakes" regarding the war with Russia. https://t.co/7TTD60AMlP
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) December 5, 2023
Having a history of being one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, Ukraine has struggled to clamp down on the misuse of both foreign and domestic funding amid its war with Russia.
Questions have been raised numerous times regarding the ultimate destination of European aid sent to the country. It is reported that Western weapons deliveries sent East sometimes reappear in the hands of criminal gangs.
The EU is not just experiencing alleged corruption problems with its aid programme in Ukraine. The bloc’s funding of Palestine has also come under fire in recent months.
Being the territory’s single-biggest foreign donor, the EU has been pressured on the misuse of Western funds by the region. Funds from the developed world are allegedly being used to aid the Hamas war machine, as well as anti- Semitic educational material for children.
Overall, the European Public Prosecutors Office (EPPO) said it believes that more than €5 billion in public funding from Brussels has been misused over the past few years. The body’s chief prosecutor claimed the EC was unaware of 90 per cent of the fraud cases involved in the statistic.
EPPO said it believed the total cost of government-level fraud to EU economies could be closer to €10 billion within this same period if an estimate of unreported cases of fraud are accounted for.
The European Public Prosecutors Office (EPPO) said that the European Union budget lost more than €5 billion in misused funds. https://t.co/lDv0TsFfvX
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 3, 2023
