OLAF investigated serious allegations involving the misuse of EU funds from the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance for Rural Development (IPARD II) in Albania.

IPARD II was designed to help modernise the Albanian agricultural sector to comply with EU standards and achieve progress toward EU membership.

One allegation was that applicants for IPARD II were obliged to pay a large percentage of their grant to ‘pre-selected’ consultancy companies, which would then facilitate contracts with the Albanian Agency for Rural Development and Agriculture (ARDA), which distributed the funds.

After a series of complex investigative steps, including digital forensic searches of documents linked to IPARD II recipients, ARDA and other economic operators, OLAF uncovered several serious irregularities during the grant-awarding phase and the implementation of several projects.

These irregularities included:
Applicants being requested to pay a sizeable part of their grant to a local consultancy company;

Contracts being awarded without competition, or through a rigged competition (with fake offers being submitted);

Inflated prices and breaches of contractual rules.

Following its investigation OLAFrecommended that the European Commission consider part of the financing of IPARD II First and Second Call for Applications €33 million, as ineligible.

OLAF further recommended that the EU prevent €112 million of future funding (IPARD III) to Albania from undue spending, until remedial measures were put in place to protect the EUs financial interests from any illegal activity.

Given the possible criminal activities discovered during the investigation OLAF also sent a copy of its findings to the judicial authorities of Albania.