[Al Ahram] The European Union...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
should stop funding Paleostinian civil servants in the Gazoo Strip because money is going to officials who do not work, European auditors said on Wednesday.
As the biggest aid donor to the Paleostinian territories, EU taxpayers pay a fifth of the salaries of teachers, doctors and bureaucrats in the small coastal territory, which has been governed by the Islamist group Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, since 2007.
But following an investigation into how EU aid is being spent, the European Court of Auditors has found thon the lam numbers of recipients are providing no public service.
The court did not have overall figures on the size of the problem. But in one spot check, 90 of the 125 employees at the National Audit Institute of Paleostine said they did not work.
In another sample, 40 percent of civil servants were not working, EU auditor Hans Gustaf Wessberg, who led the inspections over the past 16 months, told a news conference.
"Our suggestion is to discontinue the program for employees in Gazoo," said Wessberg, saying the money could go to the West Bank instead. "The payment of civil servants who do not work does not meet one of (the EU's) main objectives to provide public services to the Paleostinian people."
Wessberg denied EU money was going to former prisoners or Death Eaters and blamed the problem on the split in the Paleostinian Authority between Hamas in Gazoo and Paleostinian President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial...
's Fatah party in the West Bank.
The auditors looked into around 1 billion euros ($1.38 billion) of spending in the Paleostinian territories between 2008-2012.
Auditors could not establish what had happened to 90 million euros that was meant to pay fuel taxes and keep Gazoo's only power plant running. Fuel shortages mean it has now ceased to serve nearly half the 1.8 million population.