Four individuals have been brought before the courts in Romania on Tuesday accused of fraudulently securing €2.2m in EU funds through a “criminal scheme” to obtain payments for lands ineligible for pastures funding.

Prior to Tuesday, five further suspects, including two public officials, had already entered guilty pleas in the case.

The charges follow an investigation by the Romanian wing of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the independent EU public prosecutor.

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Three of those charged this week are public officials and one is a sheep farmer who owns a “large estate” in Romania.

It is alleged that between 2018 and 2023, the farmer used employees to identify and lease pastures they did not own, registering them under his parents’ names and a company he controlled.

Payment requests

They have been accused of submitting payment requests for land they did not own, overstating the size of eligible areas and including ineligible forested land on scheme applications.

Public officials are alleged by the prosecutor to have colluded in the scheme.

According to the investigation, he set up a criminal scheme to obtain EU subsidies for pastures that were ineligible for funds, using public officials from Romania’s paying agency to facilitate the process.

Around €2.2m in EU agricultural funds were obtained for the farmer and an additional €1.59m had been claimed, but the latter sum was not paid out on foot of investigations.

If found guilty of the charges, the defendants may face between three and 10 years’ imprisonment.

Some 86 plots of land worth an estimated €170,000 have been seized from the farmer to help compensate damage to EU funds.

All persons involved are presumed innocent until proven guilty by the competent Romanian courts of law.