Bulgaria's Primorsko Faces Losses in Judges' Real Estate Scandal

Last Tuesday, the Chair of the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (VAS) Konstantin Penchev dismissed three senior judges over an emerging corruption scandal. Photo by BGNES.

The municipality of the Black Sea town and resort of Primorsko will have to repay the investment amount of the individuals who have received building rights by pretending to be on welfare.

The information was reported for the TV channel bTV by the Primorsko Mayor, Lilyana Dimova.

Dimova spoke Wednesday on the heels of the scandal which broke after an investigative report of the Bulgarian weekly “Kapital” revealed that three senior judges from the Supreme Administrative Court (VAS) helped close relatives to obtain beach-front real estate property in Primorsko thanks to their acquired status of people on social benefits.

“We can annul contracts only for the non-realized building permits; if there is actual construction, we can try to revoke those deals through the courts system, but in the latter case the Town Hall will have to repay the investment already made by the individuals, who have done the construction in order to acquire the plot back. This will hurt our municipal budget because the building permits have been given against BGN 2 000 to 3 000 while the investments are estimated at over BGN 1 M.

The Mayor further informed that the boom of transferred building rights occurred between 2003 and 2007 when 400 such permits were issued, adding that construction had never been done on about 150 land plots and the Town Hall can automatically seize them back.

The law requires that people on welfare receive land plots up to 200 square meters as State help while in Primorsko those land plots have been much larger.

Last week the VAS Chair, Konstantin Penchev, fired the three VAS judges involved in the scandal: Panayot Genkov was removed from office as the Head of the “First A” Department of VAS; Judge Nikolay Urumov was dismissed as the head of the Third Department of VAS; and Judge Andrey Ikonomov was fired from the head position of the Fifth Department of VAS.

In addition, relatives of the former Appellate Prosecutor of Burgas, Yordan Ivanov and of the Head of the Sofia Appellate Court, Veselin Pengezov, have also received building permits.

The scandal broke after the “Kapital” weekly wrote how Urumov's daughter Denitsa Urumova, who is a Junior Judge at the Blagoevgrad District Court, is building a hotel in Primorsko, for which she obtained the construction permit by pretending to be on social benefits.

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