Malta had the highest indictment rate as a result of investigations by the EU’s anti-fraud watchdog, a new report reveals.

The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) annual report for 2015 found that in four local court cases which resulted from the watchdog’s inquiries, indictments had been made in all cases.

Only about half of the office’s recommendations for prosecutions have led to indictments by national prosecutors in recent years, and Malta and Slovenia were singled out for a high success rate.

According to the report, nearly €1 billion in EU funds were fraudulently obtained by citizens across all member states last year.

OLAF only conducted one inquiry into Malta involving abuse of EU funds in 2015. Although the report gives no details of what this investigation was about, it does say that 12 irregularities in the spending of local finances had been uncovered between 2013 and last year.

Among examples of probes into nearly 1,400 fraud allegations across the EU was a €1.3 million payment to modernise a vegetable chilling plant in Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest state.

When investigators looked into it, they found the equipment supplier and the factory owner were the same person and had inflated the price.

Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary saw the biggest concentrations of fraudulent access to EU funds last year. In another scam, importers of solar panels from China cheated EU authorities of import duty by using fake documents to change their provenance.

In a statement, the watchdog’s director, Giovanni Kessler, said he did not believe there was widespread corruption in the EU. A sharp increase in fraud detected after 2013 showed his agency was encouraging people to report concerns, he said.

Last year, €187 million were recovered through judicial action in member states and returned to Brussels.