Reporting
Article 3
1. Member States shall report to the Commission irregularities that have been the subject of a primary administrative or judicial finding. 2. By way of derogation from paragraph 1, Member States shall not report to the Commission: (a) irregularities involving a contribution from the funds of under EUR 10 000; this derogation shall not apply to irregularities which are interlinked and which involve a total contribution from the fund of over EUR 10 000, even when no individual irregularity exceeds that ceiling on its own; (b) cases where the irregularity consists solely of the failure to execute, in whole or in part, either an operation included in the co-financed programme or a direct payment owing to the non-fraudulent bankruptcy of the beneficiary; (c) cases brought to the attention of the managing authority, paying agency or other competent authority by the beneficiary voluntarily and before detection by either authority, whether before or after the payment of the public contribution; (d) cases which are detected and corrected by the managing authority, paying agency or other competent authority, before inclusion of the expenditure concerned in a declaration of expenditure submitted to the Commission. The derogations in points (c) and (d) of the preceding subparagraph shall not apply to the cases of irregularity as referred to in Article 2, point (a). 3. In the initial report of the irregularities, Member States shall provide the following information: (a) the fund, support scheme, measure, operation concerned, and, where appropriate, the name and the common identification code (CCI) number of the operational programme, the common market organisations affected, the sectors and products concerned and the budget line; (b) the identity of the natural or legal persons concerned, or both, or of any other entity having a role in the commission of the irregularity and their role, except where that information is irrelevant for the purpose of combating irregularities, given the nature of the irregularity concerned; (c) the national ID number of the persons concerned; (d) the VAT number of the persons concerned; (e) the unique beneficiary ID number; (f) the region or area where the operation has been carried out, identified using appropriate information such as the NUTS (nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) level; (g) the provision or provisions at Union and national level which have been infringed; (h) the date and source of the first information leading to the suspicion that an irregularity has been committed; (i) the practices employed in committing the irregularity; (j) where appropriate, whether the practice gives rise to suspected fraud; (k) the manner in which the irregularity was discovered; (l) the OLAF (European Anti-Fraud Office) case number, where applicable; (m) the reference to pre-debtors or the debtors ledger; (n) where appropriate, the Member States and third countries involved; (o) the period during which, or the date on which, the irregularity was committed; (p) the date on which the primary administrative or judicial finding on the irregularity was established; (q) the total amount of expenditure, expressed in terms of the Union’s contribution, the national contribution and the private contribution; (r) the amount affected by the irregularity expressed in terms of the Union’s contribution and the national contribution; (s) in cases of suspected fraud, and where no payment of the public contribution has been made to the beneficiary, the amount which would have been unduly paid had the irregularity not been identified, expressed in terms of the Union’s contribution and the national contribution; (t) the nature of the irregular expenditure. 4. Where national provisions provide for the confidentiality of investigations, reporting of the information shall be subject to the authorisation of the competent tribunal, court or other body in accordance with national rules. 5. Where some of the information referred to in paragraph 3, in particular information concerning the practices employed in committing the irregularity and the manner in which it was discovered, is not available or needs to be rectified or complemented, Member States shall provide the Commission with the missing or correct information in follow-up reports of irregularities. 6. Member States shall keep the Commission informed of the initiation, conclusion or abandonment of any procedures or proceedings for imposing administrative measures, administrative penalties or criminal penalties, with regard to the reported irregularities, as well as of the outcome of those procedures or proceedings. With regard to irregularities for which penalties have been imposed, Member States shall also indicate: (a) whether the penalties are of an administrative or a criminal nature and details of the penalties; (b) whether the penalties result from a breach of Union or national law; (c) whether fraud was established. 7. At the Commission’s written request Member States shall provide information in relation to a specific irregularity or group of irregularities.