CBA wants investigation into the Marshal of the Lubelskie Voivodship
The first results of the marshals control - suspicions of having committed a criminal offence by the Marshal of the Lubelskie Voivodship Sławomir Sosnowski and the Director of the Department of Agriculture and Environment. Six groups of producers received over PLN 22 million in undue funding.
In mid-June, the CBA simultaneously began controls of EU spending in 16 marshal offices throughout Poland. It is the first control of this type - systemic and coordinated. The controls cover procedures for taking and implementing decisions on financial support granted by the marshal offices for selected operational programmes for the years 2007-2013.
A team of the CBA officers from Lublin reached the Voivod’s office. The first findings of their control resulted in the wording and submission of a notification of the suspicions of having committed a criminal offence by the Marshal of the Lubelskie Voivodship Sławomir Sosnowski and the Director of the Department of Agriculture and Environment.
The years 2010-2013 saw events constituting the grounds for the notification. They refer to irregularities in acknowledging individual entities as groups of producers, and thus awarding them with up to several million PLN in EU funding.
The CBA control indicates that despite the law and the clear information held by the officials of a failure to meet minimum statutory conditions, the Marshal office acknowledged several companies as groups of producers. The findings of the CBA officers from Lublin indicate that the groups were artificially created in order to adapt to the conditions and provisions of the law required to receive the funding. They did not aim to concentrate the desired supplies or launch their products.
In one of such cases, described in detail in the notification submitted to the prosecutor’s office, the CBA indicates that the current Marshal of the Lubelskie Voivodship Sławomir Sosnowski did not comply with his obligations for four times, while in office, by rendering decisions on acknowledging the groups of producers, which allowed to obtain undue funding constituting a financial advantage in the amount of PLN 22 million by the companies as groups operating on the food market.
In the notification, the CBA emphasises the fact that the Marshal must have known that after the issuance of his decision, the entities would apply for additional public money.
The notification concerns the suspicion of having perpetrated a criminal offence by the Marshal of the Lubelskie Voivodship Sławomir Sosnowski and the abovementioned director, consisting in non-compliance with the obligations and acting to the detriment of the public interest in order to obtain financial advantages by the groups of producers.
The Regional Office of the CBA in Lublin, which submitted the notification, requested the Regional Prosecutor’s Office to delegate the proceedings to its officers in its entirety.
In the marshal offices, the CBA verifies, among others, the observance of the public procurement law, competitiveness principles, and the schedule of the project implementation, the verification of the project changes, the correctness of payments, the achievement of indicators (i.e. of the result and product) declared in the application and the verification of eligible costs submitted for reimbursement.
The integrated and systemic control activities carried out by the CBA also include the persons responsible for decision-making in the institutions involved in the implementation of the operational programme from the stage of taking the decision on the project co-financing to the verification of the payment application.
Public Information Division of the CBA
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CBA wants investigation into the Marshal of the Lubelskie Voivodship
