BRATISLAVA, May 16, (WEBNOVINY) — Agriculture Minister Lubomir Jahnatek has filed a criminal motion against an unknown perpetrator over fraud suspicions within the food assistance program of the previous government. “All facts we have indicate that there exists a serious suspicion of fraud in handling flour and pasta,” Prime Minister Robert Fico told a news conference on Wednesday. The most suspicious with the case is a signed annex to a contract with consortium Euromills after the collapse of the government of Iveta Radicova. Euromills was originally supposed to produce the flour and pasta in food aid for the socially dependent.
Fico explained that the annex widens the number of warehouses where the aid was to be supplied while storage of the companies clustered in the consortium were redefined as distribution warehouses. Based on the annex, the Agricultural Paying Agency (PPA) was to check the produced foodstuffs in warehouses in the period from February 27 to March 9 but no inspection took place. According to the annex that including a clause about a fictive delivery, if the agency does not take over the foodstuffs by the end of February they will be considered delivered.
The ministry currently does not know whether the 3,500 tons of flour and pasta were produced or not. Jahnatek blames the situation on his predecessor Zsolt Simon (MOST-HID) arguing that its was the PPA director who was Simon’s nominee who signed the annex and who unknown reasons did not come to take over the delivery. Jahnatek cannot imagine that PPA head would afford such serious flaws without approval from his boss Simon.
SITA