Siphoning-off of EU funding by Acuamed

19.1.2016

Question for written answer E-000343-16
to the Commission
Rule 130
Marina Albiol Guzmán (GUE/NGL)

Acuamed is a Spanish state-owned public company which constructs water desalination facilities in the Mediterranean region. Since 2013 it has been working on a project worth EUR 1 700 million, a large proportion of which — ‘around EUR 1 000 million’ in 2013 alone, according to the company itself — has been funded by the EU. The Spanish Anti-Corruption Office (Fiscalía Anticorrupción) has discovered that over EUR 20 million of the funding allocated to the project has been siphoned off, and 35 of the company’s top officials, including the Director-General and the Director of Engineering and Construction, are now under investigation.

Can the Commission state exactly how much EU money has gone into this project? Will it conduct any form of monitoring of this case, which involves the utilisation of EU funding? If funding does prove to have been siphoned off, will it require that it be repaid to the EU budget?