Ex Technoexportstroy Head: Bulgarian Foreign Ministry Chaotic

Emil Kotsev, the foremer head of Technoexportstroy, has blamed the Bulgarian Foreign MInistry over the chaotic evacuation of nationals from Libya. Photo by BGNES

Emil Kotsev, Head of Bulgarian state-owned Technoexportstroy, who was fired earlier Wednesday by PM Boyko Borisov, has blamed the Foreign Ministry of being chaotic and careless.

Kotsev drew the Prime Minister rage after he said it was him who sent the first plane which rescued 110 Bulgarians from the ongoing turmoil in Libya.

Borisov said he fired Kotsev because he had been using the Foreign Ministry for doing self promotion.

On Monday, it was announced that the prime minister had ordered the Bulgarian government's Airbus to be ready to fly to Libya. However, it was announced later that the first plane to rescue the nationals would be sent from Technoexportstroy.

In the end, on Tuesday, the first plane that took off for Libya was the government's Airbus, but the first 110 Bulgarians returned with a flight with Technoexportstroy's aircraft.

"The company that I arranged the plane from offered me an aircraft with 194 places. But they wanted the plane to take off at 5 am on Tuesday. But my representative in Tripoli asked me to delay the flight because people from Benghazi and the country-side would not be able to make it to the airport in Tripoli by 9 am. So I delayed it. The company told me the next flight could be at 6:05 pm. And it took off at that time. It had 144 places only, but they were enough, since we returned with 115 people," Kotsev said.

In his words, 22 of the people were Technoexportstroy's employees and the rest were Bulgarian nationals who were working in Libya.

"We loaded everybody who wanted to return from Tripoli. If this is cheap PR, tomorrow, if something similar happens again, I will do it again. But the PR is not for me. I always said it was an order by PM Borisov, coordinated with Minister Rosen Plevneliev and the Foreign Ministry," Kotsev said.

He also added that the people who returned from Libya did not have passports.

"The Bulgarian Embassy had not done its job. People had to be given temporary passports for returning to Bulgaria and other documents," the former head of Technoexportstroy said.

In his opinion, the Foreign Ministry "is attacking so that its idiocies do not surface".

"Unfortunately, the Foreign Ministry is chaotic and careless. De facto, there is no Bulgarian Embassy to Libya. Technoexportstroy is taking over the duties of the embassy because everybody calls Technoexportstroy for this plane and no one calls the embassy," Kotsev said.

In his words, the whole organization of the flight with the 110 Bulgarians have been managed by his company. He added that there were only two Foreign Ministry officials who carried 200 temporary passports.

"But they dropped everything and started dealing with the legal stay of the government aircraft. The people that we sent to Bulgaria have organized the registration and the boarding of all 115 people," he said.

The plane, arranged by Technoexportstroy, landed early Wednesday morning (4 am) at the Sofia International Airport with 110 Bulgarians and 6 Romanians on board. They are mainly medical and construction workers.

Later on Wednesday, the Bulgarian government's Airbus, sent personally by Borisov and Regional Development Minister Rosen Plevneliev, successfully landed on Sofia's International Airport with only one Bulgarian, a woman, on board. The others passengers are said to include 70 people from Croatia, 2 from South Korea and 10 from China. 

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