thomas davison Party Leader
Joined: 03 Jun 2005 Posts: 4018 Location: northumberland
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Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2013 2:25 pm Post subject: POLISH ROAD SCAM COST BRITAIN 100M, AND THEY WANT MORE |
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UK
POLAND ROADS SCAM COSTS BRITAIN �100M
UKIP Euro MP Marta Andraesen
Saturday February 2,2013
By Macer Hall
BRITISH taxpayers have lost �100million thanks to a European Union funding scandal, it emerged last night.
The cash was squandered through fraud in a price-fixing racket in an EU project to build new roads in Poland.
Earlier this week, the European Commission, based in Brussels, froze a �3billion aid deal for the construction projects after the scam was uncovered.
But hundreds of millions of pounds of European citizens� money has already been lost. Last night, the latest example of EU waste provoked fresh anger from anti-Brussels critics.
UK Independence Party Euro MP Marta Andreasen, a former EU accountant, said: �I have been saying for years EU funding is not handled properly. Billions of taxpayers� money is handed out across Europe without any checks in place. It is simply given to the national agencies and as far as the European Commission is concerned, what they do with it is their responsibility.
�This is not good enough. Fraud and irregularities are rife and all the European Commission can do is say it is not our fault. Well, sorry but it is.
�If proper audits took place and the spending was properly regulated at national level, overseen by the Commission, we could avoid these situations happening. It is no use for the Commission to freeze funding after the event.
�The monies should be recovered from Poland so as to avoid British and other taxpayers� picking up the tab for their chronic mismanagement.�
European Commission chiefs ordered the freezing of the aid �to protect the EU budget and EU taxpayers from a case of suspected fraud�.
Spokeswoman Shirin Wheeler said: �The Commission has prudently interrupted payments until the situation is cleared and the scope of the problem is established. We would like to see payments resumed as soon as possible.� Eleven people have been charged by prosecutors over price-fixing between road-building contractors and Polish officials responsible for handing out EU cash. They are believed to include construction firm executives and an ex-director at the Polish state road agency.
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Fraud and irregularities are rife and all the European Commission can do is say it is not our fault
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UK Independence Party Euro MP Marta Andreasen
The scandal is seen as a huge embarrassment for Poland which receives more EU cash than any country � over �50billion in the last seven years.
Elzbieta Bienkowska, Poland�s minister for regional development, described the decision to freeze aid as incomprehensible. �Poland is the injured party in this case, as it is Polish investigators who discovered there may have been � in two or three cases � a price-fixing deal by contractors,� she said.
Questions are now being raised over a series of EU-funded road projects in Poland worth a total of �8.6billion.
The scandal is expected to add to the growing row over the EU�s next seven-year budget. David Cameron and other EU leaders are due to meet next week to try to thrash out a deal.
Pawel Swidlicki, at the Open Europe think-tank, said: �With public opinion in the UK and other states in favour of cutting EU spending, this could not have come at a worse time.�
What are all these POLES going to do when we come out of the EU, they will have to leave giving work and homes back to our people again,
When the bubble bursts - it will be 'God help us' - our wealth creating industries and jobs have been replaced by government non-jobs - eg A 'Perigrines and People Engagement Officer' recently appointed to look after the perigrene falcons inhabiting Derby Cathedral ! - At the same time our country has been flooded with thousands of immigrants, many of whom are completely illiterate - all supported by a 'real economy' which has been progressively crushed out of existence by obscene levels of taxation. The EU is just a communist state - exactly the same as the Soviet Union, where the wealth of the people is confiscated by the unseen parasites who pull the strings. Come on people, we have to rise up against this ethnocidal destruction of our country, for which our forefathers died in two world wars. |
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