Bulgaria's Parliament OKs Resignation of MP over Public Tender Row

Lawmaker Irena Kotseva (1-R) talking to Regional Development Minister Lilyana Pavlova. File photo, BGNES

Lawmakers overwhelmingly backed the move of their colleague Irena Kotseva to leave Parliament after her name was involved in a public tender scandal.

Irena Kotseva's resignation was approved by 119 MPs, 18 voting against and 11 abstaining. Kotseva's resignation was met with opposition only from the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), of which she is a member and which shee represented in Parliament.

Last week, an investigation of private NOVA TV revealed that a firm owned by Kotseva's husband had won a public tender for the equipment of sixty bus stops in Sofia.

The sum he was awarded was supposedly overwritten, with experts suggesting the actual cost should be twice lower than expenses he had foreseen.

Dnevnik.bg quotes Kotseva as telling MPs she chose to quit Parliament to dispel any doubt that an inspection into the public tender would be objective.

Sofia Deputy Mayor Lyubomir Hristov also stepped down after the scandal broke, and the head of Sofia Urban Mobility Center, the company that operates public transport in the Bulgarian capital, followed suit at the request of Mayor Yordanka Fandakova.

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