Money meant for rural development has once again ended up as a target for fraud. The Financial Police Office filed criminal charges against five individuals and two companies over suspicions that they used falsified documentation to try to milk over 50 million denars (around 815,000 euros) from the European IPARD program.

The mechanism, according to the charges, was as simple as it was brazen. Two supervising engineers allegedly carried out technical inspections of unfinished buildings and issued false reports stating they were complete. With that documentation, the companies then registered the unfinished constructions in the Cadastre, even though they didn't meet the legal requirements for use.

The charges include abuse of official position, forging business documents, fraud with EU funds, and the use of false documents. The exact sum they wanted to collect amounts to 50,141,528 denars. The cases have been forwarded to the Basic Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime and to the Skopje prosecutor's office.

The scheme is familiar to the point of boredom: the state hands out money for development, someone finds a way to siphon it off without building anything, and in the end the bill is paid by everyone who honestly waits in line. The financial police reacted this time - but the question is how many such „unfinished buildings" slipped through unnoticed before someone spotted the trick. IPARD is supposed to build villages, not somebody's fake paperwork.