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Bulgaria's ex-EU farm aid chief sentenced for fake master's

04 June 2012, 19:06 CET
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(SOFIA) - Bulgaria's ex-farm aid chief, who oversaw the distribution of millions of EU funds, Monday received a suspended sentence for falsely claiming to have a master's degree.

Kalina Ilieva, the former chief executive of the state agricultural fund, struck an agreement with the prosecution after admitting her guilt, the Sofia regional court announced.

It handed Ilieva a three-year suspended sentence with a five-year probation period for claiming to have a master of arts from the Berlin Hochschule fuer Technik und Wirthschaft.

A check of the university books found that Ilieva had indeed enrolled in the school but never earned a degree after failing to attend any lectures or take a single exam.

Ilieva headed the primary institution that distributed EU farming aid in Bulgaria in August 2009, aged just 28, and remained in the job for over a year.

At the time, Bulgaria was fighting to unfreeze millions in EU farming aid that had been blocked over suspected corruption, and Ilieva was put forward by the government as an extremely competent official, trusted by both the European Commission and the EU anti-fraud office OLAF.

Under Ilieva's term in office the EU unblocked all aid to Bulgaria in November 2009 and millions of euros were disbursed to beneficiaries.

But the scandal around her fake degree turned her name into a byword for incompetence and nepotism in the Bulgarian administration.


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