Police in the northern city of Varazdin on Monday reported having completed an investigation into 11 employees of a local rehabilitation centre suspected of defrauding the European Social Fund (ESF) of HRK 4.2 million through subsidy fraud and document forgery.

The police said that the investigation determined that in the period from October 2013 to August 2016 the centre’s directors, aged 55, 44 and 40, implemented an ESF project for mobile teams assisting socially deprived persons.

Funds in the amount of about €563,000 were secured from the ESF for the provision of social services to those beneficiaries.

Even though they were aware that members of the mobile teams did not make the number of visits to the programme’s beneficiaries as required by the relevant projects, the centre’s heads falsely declared those visits as having been made.

Acting in agreement with the centre’s directors, eight female employees of the centre, aged 35, 45, 40, 34, 36, 42, 32 and 49, who were in charge of implementing the projects, forged the relevant documents by falsely stating the number of visits to the programme beneficiaries to make them exceed the actual number of visits, requesting payment for them from the rehabilitation centre.

Police believe the European Social Fund was thus defrauded of around HRK 4.2 million.

All 11 persons were reported for subsidy fraud and document forgery.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)