Penam has belonged to Agroferta since 2004. The owner was Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (YES), later he invested the company in trust funds.
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The Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček (for YES), whose office is responsible for the grant project, asked the server iRozhlas, who informed about the decision, did not comment on the audit procedure, stating that he has no information to do so. Ministry spokeswoman Štěpánka Filipová stated that “if the case were closed to the detriment of the subsidy recipient, the managing authority would recover the funds in accordance with the law”. According to her, however, the case cannot be considered closed and the ministry wants to examine the possibilities of further action.
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According to Brussels officials, the fact that Penam’s project for a toast bread line was not innovative was confirmed by three independent opinions, which are mentioned in the current analysis of Babiš’s conflict of interest sent to Prague in October. “The Commission continues to insist that the project should not have been selected by the Czech authorities and that it is ineligible for co-financing from the European Regional Development Fund,” Brussels wrote, according to the server. According to him, the Czech authorities should cancel the Penam project.
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According to the website, Pekárna Zelená louka applied for a European subsidy for the factory in Herink near Prague five years ago, and passed the selection of ministerial officials only narrowly. The project of healthier and tastier toasts without preservatives received 65 and 63 points, respectively, and the minimum was 60. Penam thus received money for the construction of a line for the production of toast bread from the Czech state treasury. Last December, the European Commission evaluated the project differently, according to independent experts it contacted, the project was not innovative and therefore did not meet the main selection criteria. They would give him a maximum of 30 points.
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