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NOS News•today, 06:05•Changed today, 07:18
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Thomas Spekschoor
news reporter
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Thomas Spekschoor
news reporter
The Public Prosecution Service already warned in 2019 that equipment to check whether manure transports are being tampered with is susceptible to fraud. This is evident from a document in the hands of the NOS and Follow the Money. The equipment has still not been replaced some five years after the first warning.
The Public Prosecution Service wrote in a letter to the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Safety (LNV) that the equipment is “easy to manipulate without the need for technical facilities”. Transporters adjust the air pressure in the suspension of their trucks, making it appear as if manure is being loaded or unloaded, while in reality this is not the case.
Farmers must annually remove the part of the manure that they are not allowed to spread on their own land. For example, it goes to manure processing companies or to arable farmers who can use the manure. That costs the farmers who have to dispose of the manure a lot of money.
By manipulating the measuring equipment, they and the transporters can, for example, pretend that they are removing more manure than is actually the case. The farmers still spread the extra manure (which on paper has been removed) over their land.
Advisors convicted
It is known that this involves fraud, for example by reporting from the NRC newspaper, but also because just over a year ago three agricultural consultants were sentenced to prison for involvement in fertilizer fraud. The European Commission has also been urging the Netherlands for years to tackle manure fraud more rigorously. The manure rules exist because too much manure is bad for soil life and water quality.
In the warning to the ministry, the Public Prosecution Service wrote that fraud can take place due to inadequate control systems. “Various criminal investigations (…) show that fraud is taking place with these systems on a substantial scale.”
Tampering with the system that is intended to prevent manure fraud is often combined with other forms of fraud, the Public Prosecution Service says. If the systems made fraud less easy, these other forms of fraud would also occur much less often, was the message to the ministry. However, the equipment has not yet been replaced.
Minister Adema has informed the House of Representatives that the equipment is not always “state-of-the-art”. He was not talking about the system’s susceptibility to fraud, but about its “susceptibility to interference”.
Chances of being caught increase
Once again, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality emphasizes that fraud does not occur in all cases if the system does not work properly. The Public Prosecution Service does therefore explicitly talk about fraud, but the ministry states that there is no clear picture of its extent. “There are no factual figures on possible abuse.”
However, the regulator NVWA already admitted that the chance of being caught for fertilizer fraudsters is small. In the 2020 annual report, the watchdog wrote that there are one million manure transports in the Netherlands every year, of which the NVWA physically checks about a thousand. The number of signals that manure fraud was taking place increased around that time.
The ministry says in a response that something has indeed been done to increase the chance of being caught. A system has been introduced that allows the NVWA to monitor live which manure trucks are on the road and how much manure they are carrying. The national introduction of that system was postponed for several years, but it was successful on January 1 last year.
Documents that NOS and Follow the Money obtained through a WOO request show that the introduction of the system took a lot of time at the NVWA, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and the ministry. Staff changes and shortages at the NVWA meant that the file had to be transferred again and again, which led to the long delay. That so much time was spent setting up the system that transports manure realtime had to follow, meant that there was no time to replace the fraud-sensitive equipment.
The incentive for fraud will probably increase.
Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality
The ministry has announced that replacement of the fraud-sensitive equipment is now being considered, but the search for a company that can supply that equipment is proving difficult. Several Dutch universities have already indicated that they are not interested or have insufficient knowledge of the manure market.
It will probably take quite some time before the defective equipment is actually replaced. The ministry is still in discussions with one party, but not about the actual delivery of new equipment. A market survey would simply be conducted to see if another company could actually supply the equipment.
At the same time, the ministry says that the search is urgent. In the coming years, farmers will be allowed to spread less and less manure on their own land due to European rules, which means they will have to dispose of more manure. That costs a lot of money and so the ministry says: “If manure production remains the same, the incentive for fraud will probably increase.”
2024-02-09 05:05:46
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