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1. The authorising officer responsible shall specify the supporting documents required to accompany payment requests.

2. For each grant, pre-financing may be split into several instalments in accordance with sound financial management. The request for a further pre-financing instalment shall be accompanied by a beneficiary’s statement on the consumption of previous pre-financing. The instalment shall be paid in full if at least 70 % of the total amount of any earlier pre-financing has been consumed. Otherwise, the instalment shall be reduced by the amounts still to be consumed until that threshold is reached.

3. The beneficiary shall, without prejudice to the obligation to provide supporting documents, certify on its honour that information contained in payment requests is full, reliable and true. The beneficiary shall also certify that the costs incurred are eligible in accordance with the grant agreement and that payment requests are substantiated by adequate supporting documents that may be checked.

4. A certificate on the financial statements of the action or the work programme and underlying accounts may be demanded by the authorising officer responsible in support of interim payments or payments of balances of any amount. Such a certificate shall be requested on the basis of a risk assessment taking into account, in particular, the amount of the grant, the amount of the payment, the nature of the beneficiary and the nature of the supported activities. The certificate shall be produced by an approved external auditor or, in the case of public bodies, by a competent and independent public officer. The certificate shall certify, in accordance with a methodology approved by the authorising officer responsible and on the basis of agreed-upon procedures compliant with international standards, that the costs declared by the beneficiary in the financial statements on which the payment request is based are real, accurately recorded and eligible in accordance with the grant agreement. In specific and duly justified cases, the authorising officer responsible may request the certificate in the form of an opinion or other format in accordance with international standards.

5. An operational verification report, produced by an independent third party approved by the authorising officer responsible, may be requested by the authorising officer responsible in support of any payment, on the basis of a risk assessment. The operational verification report shall state that the operational verification was done in accordance with a methodology approved by the authorising officer responsible and whether the action or work programme was actually implemented in accordance with the conditions set out in the grant agreement.