A long time ago I worked in an EU R&D project where a third of the funding (~7billion Euros) was managed by a scandinavian telecom manufacturer. One year after

A long time ago I worked in an EU R&D project where a third of the funding (~7billion Euros) was managed by a scandinavian telecom manufacturer. One year after the start of the project, this manufacturer had done nothing, so the project leader made sure the work was transferred to a German SME which looked more active. After another year, still nothing was done, so the project leader became very anxious. What happened in the last 6 months of the project was that students did the work. But they probably were not aware that EU paid 7b for their work. I got the impression this kind of behavior was not that uncommon.