Let's take this from March 2016 as an example: EU approves $274
million in aid for
Palestinians
- $184m to the Palestinian Authority (PA) via PEGASE
- $89m via UNRWA
I won't focus on the money going to UNRWA, the agency has its own
complicated maze of subcommittees. The $184m is intended to be
funneled to the PA, but with a focus on health and education.
PEGASE is a mechanism the EU set up in 2008 to facilitate direct
financial support to the
PA. This
EU document explains how PEGASE works. The money is sent directly from
the EU using the ENPI to the PA's bank account so there are no middle
men that the money will pass.
The lion share of the PEGASE donations goes to two PA expense areas:
- About 70%: Civil Servants and Pensioners (CSP)
- About 15%: Vulnerable Palestinian Families (VPF)
VSP is a welfare system for poor families and CSP pays parts of the
salaries of civil servants staff and pensioners. That is everything
from doctors in public hospitals to teachers and policemen.
Payments to CSP appears to be monthly and to VPF quarterly. So if
salaries are due in October 2016, the EU will pay the amount in
September 2016.
A very complicated system of checks are in place to ensure that the
money reaches the intended recipients:
For the CSP and VPF components, the ‘activity flows’ describing the
checks to be performed by the EUREP, audit firms, PA and banks consist
of more than 50 actions. Excluding the PA staff involved, the Pegase
DFS checks require the involvement of 16 full-time equivalent
employees.
Among the checks mentioned is ensuring that no recipients are on any
terror
lists. "Lists"
in plural because the EU, the US and Israel have different lists of
sanctioned individuals and each list has to be checked by PEGASE
staff.
A picture of the verification system is found on page 42 of the linked
to document.
From what I can deduce, PEGASE has names and addresses (and in the
case of CSP beneficiaries salary) of the almost 100,000 Palestinians
recieving aid. If civil servant is hired, his or her salary and
contact details are forwarded to PEGASE administrators who then either
denies or accepts the beneficiary. According to the EU itself, there is very little corruption or mismanagement of the funds:
In December 2013, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) published a report on PEGASE ... The report also concluded that the control measures put in place are robust and that there is no sign of mismanagement or diversion of funds.
http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/neighbourhood/pdf/key-documents/palestine/20160219-aap-2016-palestine-part_1-financing-commission-decision.pdf
Details of the actual money transfers are found in the ENPI financing
agreements. The appendix at page 44 - 49 lists all of them for the
years 2008 - 2010. They appear to not be available online. But in them
you should find details about the involved banks and so on.
