SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Feb. 3 (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Governing Council of the Canary Islands today approved a Framework Plan for Anti-Fraud Measures to ensure that the funds from the European Reconstruction and Resilience Mechanism (MRR) are used properly. The document will apply to all regional departments and staff that manage funds from the aforementioned instrument.
The agreement follows the mandate of the European Commission so that every entity, decision-maker or executor, that participates in the national Recovery plans has an anti-fraud plan that allows “guaranteeing and declaring”, in its respective field of action, that the funds are have been used in accordance with applicable regulations regarding the prevention, detection and correction of fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest.
The document approved today by the Government includes four different types of measures: prevention, detection, correction and prosecution.
Among the first, is the creation of specific units for the prevention of fraud in the departments of the Autonomous Administration, which must carry out functions such as periodic risk assessments, management of the internal complaints channel or verification of compliance with the normative.
The development of adequate risk assessment mechanisms is also planned for all the measures managed, in search of the parts of the process that are most susceptible to fraud, and especially to control them.
Particular attention will be paid to the identification of measures that are more susceptible to fraud, such as those with high intensity, high budget or many requirements to be justified by the applicant; and an analysis of the data will be carried out, within the limits relating to their protection, which will make it possible to detect possible high-risk situations even before the funds are granted.
With regard to detection measures, tools will be included that allow the use of subsidy and risk score databases, or the development of fraud indicators and their communication to personnel in a position to detect them.
The measures related to the correction of fraud are based on the premise that its detection will lead to the immediate suspension of the procedure, notification to the authorities concerned and the review of all those projects that may have been exposed to it. In this line, the incidence and its classification as systemic or punctual will be evaluated; and the projects or part of the projects affected by the fraud and financed or to be financed by the MRR will be withdrawn.
Regarding the persecution, the facts will be communicated to the decision-making authority who, in turn, will do the same with the responsible authority. If this is the case, the punishable acts will be reported to the National Anti-Fraud Coordination Service for its assessment and eventual communication to the European Anti-Fraud Office.
In the same way, a file of reserved information will be initiated to purge responsibilities or initiate a disciplinary file and the facts will be denounced before the prosecutor’s office and the competent courts, in the appropriate cases.
