EU Fraud

Conservative Euro MP David Sumberg is demanding an urgent overhaul of the fraud riddled EU accounts system to stop North West taxpayers cash disappearing into a 'black hole'.

Mr Sumberg was speaking after a financial watchdog failed to give EU accounts a clean bill of health for the ninth year.

The European Court of Auditors (ECA) has refused to sign off on the EU's £65 billion budget, saying the accounts are still plagued by "significant errors" and "irregularities". The Court said the European Union is failing to keep track of huge annual subsidies, and 91 per cent of its budget is error ridden or cannot be verified.

Mr Sumberg demanded that Neil Kinnock, the European Commissioner in charge of cleaning up fraud, should resign for his 'abject failure' to root out corruption.

"If a British minister oversaw a department where just nine per cent of finances could be properly accounted for and where millions of pounds were illegally diverted into secret bank accounts they would be driven from office in shame,' he said. "Mr Kinnock has failed taxpayers, not only in the North West, but the whole of Europe for his inability to put in place safeguards to stop the appalling dishonesty going on under his nose."

Mr Sumberg said he is especially concerned about the 'endemic abuse' of the Common Agricultural Policy, which still consumes almost half the £65 billion budget.

"Hard earned taxpayers cash is being sucked into a giant black hole of bogus subsidy claims,' he said. "For example ECA checks in Portugal on claims for suckler cows found that 50.2 per cent of animals did not exist. Meanwhile the "error rate" in forage and crop acreage was 89.7 per cent in Luxembourg, 42.9 per cent in Sweden, 34.5 per cent in France despite increased use of satellite photography to spot fraud."

The Court said money has also disappears into Russia, Central Asia, the Balkans and developing countries.

Mr Sumberg demanded that the dither and delay in the EU switching to the sort of modern accounting system used by the British Government and World Bank, must end immediately.

"Unless this inept, rotten, error strewn accounting system is replaced fraud will continue,' he said. "We cannot and must not allow this to happen. With ten new countries joining next year the EU must act with the utmost urgency to implement a proper accounting system to end the theft - for that is what it is - once and for all of taxpayers cash."

NOTE: The court also suggested that EU staff were abusing the disability system on a large scale, costing taxpayers £54 million a year. Half the claimants had psychological or stress-related complaints. A court official said: "These are not coal miners or deep-sea fishermen. It's not normal for so many to retire for ill-health." Most of the invalids are in their 30s or 40s, securing life-time pensions worth 70 per cent of the final retirement-age salaries.

EU fraud ripping off North West taxpayers