Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Funds

alvet-Unt said Enterprise Estonia bears responsibility for its actions as a whole.

"The decisions were made at the time they were made, based on the facts and the knowledge that one had at that moment. We have identified no intentional wrongdoing by the board – hence Enterprise Estonia is responsible in the present case," she said.

Talvet-Unt highlighted the uniqueness of the case, as never before has Enterprise Estonia been in a situation where a project is suspended as a result of a family member related to the recipient of the support being elected as president.

"We have learned to definitely bring in significantly more different parties in complex cases like this," she said.

The manager of Enterprise Estonia also said that the findings concerning the actions of the foundation give no reason to suspect that similar mistakes were made by the managers of the foundation with other projects. "We took a look at other cases too last year and this definitely is a unique case at the present moment," Talvet-Unt said.

"We are an implementation division of the EU and we give money in the hundreds of millions of euros to tens of thousands of projects. Where the margin of error allowed by the EU in the handling of projects is 2%, ours was 0.002% in 2016, for instance," she said.

Talvet-Unt said the decision of Enterprise Estonia not to file a further claim for recovery against Ermamaa was not influenced by the fact that the company belonged to the president. "We behave the same vis-a-vis all recipients of support. It we have to redo a decision based on decisions made by us earlier and it is evident that we have made a mistake, we will do it regardless of who is the recipient of support," Talvet-Unt told. "If we were in a similar situation with some other company, we would have decided the same way," she said.

Enterprise Estonia announced on Tuesday that it has decided to deem 90 percent of the support awarded to the company OU Ermamaa non-eligible for support and to return this amount to the European Commission, as well as to execute the repayment in the amount of roughly 152,000 euros using funds of Enterprise Estonia and to file no further claim against former president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

There is no sufficient legal basis to file a claim for additional recovery, Enterprise Estonia said. The board chairman of the foundation, Sille Talvet-Unt, said that while no intentional non-compliances were determined, mistakes were identified that had been made in various stages of processing of the Ermamaa project.

OU Ermamaa, a company owned at the time by Toomas Hendrik Ilves's wife Evelin Ilves, received 190,393 euros in support from EU structural funds in 2006. The total size of the project the structural fund support for which was granted via Enterprise Estonia was 380,786 euros and its aim was to develop the Arma tourist farm situated in Viljandi County, South Estonia. In connection with Toomas Hendrik Ilves becoming president of Estonia, the obligation to use the property for the intended purpose was suspended until the completion of the president's term in office.

At the request of the recipient of the support, the board of Enterprise Estonia decided on March 30, 2012 that fulfilment of the original business plan must resume from Jan. 1, 2017 at the latest and continue through July 31, 2020, and that if this is not done the recipient of the support must pay back 10 percent of the support. OU Ermamaa notified Enterprise Estonia of its intention not to resume fulfilment of the business plan and paid back the said amount on Oct. 12, 2016.