EU says Palestinian Authority lost €2.5bn of aid

The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK has obtained a draft report by the EU that underlines the concern that the Palestinian Authority has lost 2.5 billion euros in aid over the last four years. The newspaper obtained the unpublished draft report from the European Court, an official EU institution based in Luxembourg, and disclosed its contents on Sunday.

According to the report, the EU transferred a total of 2.5 billion euros in aid between 2008 and 2012, but it does not know where the funds were directed.

The newspaper revealed that the EU recently sent a delegation to occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to investigate the way aid is being handled. The investigators confirmed, according to the report, the absence of any administrative procedures to prevent the exploitation of aid and expressed a real fear that the funds have been “misspent, squandered or lost to corruption”.

The investigators drew comparisons to similar experiences of corruption and the poor utilization of aid money in Egypt, where a total amount of one billion euros has disappeared over the last six years.