The environmentalist Alexander Dunchev revealed in his post on the social network Facebook that DPS, NDSV and BSP have distributed more than 30,000 decares of priceless forests to businessmen close to them, and that for pennies. He also pointed out that the struggle continues and there are citizens who do not surrender. We publish his analysis:
“For 20 years, the struggle to protect the replaced state forests along the Black Sea and the mountains continues. A fight that, similar to corruption, has no end in sight, but it’s good that there are a handful of journalists, media and citizens who don’t give up!
From 2003 to 2009, DPS, NDSV and BSP distributed more than 30,000 decares of priceless forests to close „businessmen“ for pennies. With protests and complaints to the European Commission, the substitutes were stopped in 2009, and the EC declared them illegal state aid in 2014.
Initially, GERB helped to stop even their construction, but in 2019, not without the help of the deputy minister, the legalization of theft began, and the illegal aid with false market valuations was lowered from BGN 1 billion to BGN 80 million. Fortunately, the oligarchs stuck to paying even this ridiculous 80 million BGN, which made the EC quite angry, and on 30.10.2023, it started a legal case against Bulgaria in the European Court against the false efforts of the state.
And at that time, the substitutes even started pressure through the bar association and the constitutional court to drop the ban on the construction of the substitutes, so that they could build their hotels and resorts on the stolen forests.
And we come to the „assembly“. In June 2023, I personally warned Minister Kiril Vatev and Kiril Petkov that the appointment as deputy minister of a cadre of DPS-GERB, who had proven himself in concealing fraud in the forests, incl. of substitutes in 2019, will be a complete betrayal of PP-DB voters. But no – he was very „obedient“… And now you have a constitutional case, and a European case, and dozens of lost cases in our courts, with the risk that the state will not only not receive a single lev or a square meter of forest more than the schemers, but and to pay millions of BGN fines to the EU.
But there is a solution that both civil activists and the EC already consider to be the only useful and effective one – a law to abolish all forest substitutes, and to end once and for all this biggest forest fraud of the century.”
