Bulgaria Ministry Lifts Lid on Second EU Road Funds Report

The National Road Infrastructure Agency made headlines last year after its former head, Veselin Georgiev, was charged with awarding contracts worth tens of millions of BGN to companies run by two of his brothers. Photo by BGNES

The Bulgarian Ministry of Finance has declassified a second report into the existence of conflicts of interest with EU funds from the ISPA and PHARE programs.

This is the second of three reports issued in 2008 by KPMG Bulgaria consultancy and discloses violations and lapses that led to the freezing of funds under the PHARE and ISPA pre-accession programs. The first report was disclosed last Friday.

The report, part of which has become available to the press, lists former employees of the Roads Fund, who worked for companies that won contracts or that had relatives working in companies in sub-projects. The employees are not listed by name, but as a person A, B, C...

Person A is the deputy executive director of the former National Road Infrastructure Fund, which was responsible for the carrying out EU projects in the period June 19 2007 - April 23 2008, the report said.

The National Road Infrastructure Agency made headlines last year after its former head, Veselin Georgiev, was charged with awarding contracts worth tens of millions of BGN to companies run by two of his brothers.

The controversy that led to the freezing of the EUR 723 M earmarked to improve Bulgaria's dilapidated roads broke out following an investigation by the newspaper Kapital.

Georgiev resigned from his post under pressure from the media.

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