Police investigating two in multi-billion crown corruption case

Anticorruption police are investigating two managerial employees of the office of the Southwest Regional Council for illegal distribution of grant money. Police believe that the two may have been involved in influencing the selection of projects that would benefit from several billion crowns in EU funding. At the behest of the police, the Ministry of Finance halted a nearly completed tender process for a series of public developmental projects in the Southwest region amounting to 3.8 billion crowns. A police raid of the office carried out at the end of last year did not result in any arrests. The charges of influencing a public tender and damaging the interests of the European Community carry sentences of up to 12 years imprisonment.