Ex Bulgaria Forestry Head Urged to Confess over Land Swaps

Domestic | February 9, 2010, Tuesday // 12:02|  views

Agriculture Minister Naydenov (pictured) has urged ex Forestry Head to make confessions over the land swap deals. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria’s Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov has urged the former Forestry Agency head, Stefan Yurukov, to make confessions over the notorious land swap deals.

“We expect Stefan Yurukov to tell us who ordered him to carry out the deals in which public lands were transferred to private companies at ridiculous prices,” Naydenov told bTV with respect to the scandalous deals carried out mostly during the term of the Stanishev government that threaten to get Bulgaria in trouble with the European Commission.

Naydenov declared that the former Forestry Agency head did not act in his own right, and that he should confess in order to save himself from being the only person charged with the violations.

Yurukov and former Agriculture Minister Valeri Tsvetanov are currently facing charges of criminal breach of trust over the land swap deals.

Last week Bulgaria got a letter from the EC asking the government to prove in 20 days that the land swap deals did not in fact present subsidizing private companies by the state. Thus, Bulgaria may face a fine of up to BGN 1,5 B.

The current Bulgarian government of the GERB party declared that it was not going to defend the land swap deals before the EC, and would try to prove that they were in fact violations of Bulgarian and EU law in order to revise them.

A total of 47 land swap deals (encompassing 33 000 decares; the status of 25% was changed subsequently) were carried out in the period before 2009; 15 of them are mentioned in the European Commission letter. According to Minister Naydenov, the first letter from the EC Competition Directorate-General warning Bulgaria over the land swaps was received in the fall of 2008 but was not made public by the Stanishev government.

Naydenov said the Borisov government would decide on its precise course of action on Wednesday during the meeting of the Prime Minister’s Security Council.

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Tags: land swaps, Miroslav Naydenov, EC, Sergey Stanishev, Valeri Tsvetanov, Forestry Agency, Agriculture Minister

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