Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2010 as same-day news, and the events it describes concerning the Junta de Andalucía’s innovation grants were current at that time.
It emerged today that the owners of eight companies have been arrested for obtaining grants to modernise their businesses through Plan IDEA. Once they received the money, they didn’t use it for the purpose it was granted for.
Among those arrested are staff from a consultancy that handled the paperwork.
The fraud was uncovered by inspectors from the Junta de Andalucía’s Department of Economy, Innovation and Science (Consejería de Economía, Innovación y Ciencia; the Junta is Andalusia’s regional government).
The fraud consisted of obtaining these grants by applying to replace the companies’ computers, supposedly so that they could keep up with innovation in new technologies. The consultancy in charge of handling the grant applications forged the documents so that the companies met the eligibility requirements.
Once the money reached the company, it wasn’t used for that purpose: the companies kept working with their old computers and pocketed the Plan IDEA grant money in their own accounts.
I don’t know whether Plan IDEA is a good idea, but some business owners in Málaga clearly had good ideas when it came to profiting from it. It’s worth remembering that even committing fraud requires a plan for the procedure to follow, something which, my friends, you’ll now have time to think over, calmly working out where you went wrong when carrying it out.
For the moment, involvement by Junta de Andalucía staff in the fraud has been ruled out, and I sincerely hope that nobody from the Junta took part.
Further reading
Featured image: Mattruffoni, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
