The Anti-Corruption Fund (ACF) came out with a new investigation: „Playing the parking lot game: How individuals, notorious for the Kapitan Andreevo scandal, are directing their interests to Bulgaria’s northern border.”
„What is happening is that the Municipality of Ruse, against the background of public promises that it will solve the problem of the many trucks that accumulate and obstruct the city, has in fact gifted a municipal property on the border of the Danube bridge for a period of 30 years to a private company. This private company is apparently already connected to persons known from the border of Kapitan Andreevo, and the company that operates the truck parking there as well,“, ACF lawyer Lora Georgieva commented.
According to her, a procedure was started last summer for which only two companies applied, one offered BGN 50 above the announced price, and the other BGN 200,000, and the second one, which offered a higher price, was selected. Georgieva noted an interesting fact that the second one was set up two days before the deadline for submitting documents and the Municipality did not award the construction of a parking lot, but gave its property for 30 years to this company with the condition that the company build the parking lot. She specified that in return she paid the Municipality BGN 600,000 per year and pointed out:
„There is a big problem – both legal and economic. Thus, the Municipality presented a huge area of municipal property for use by a private company for an extremely long period of time. It turned out that it was not clear how the estimated price was prepared and why it was extended so far in time. In reality, the Municipality initially received BGN 1.6 million and then every year just under BGN 600,000. According to the financial experts we consulted, the Municipality would have recouped its investment within a year or two if it had built the parking lot, even if it had taken a loan.”
„The entire control of how the parking lot is managed is in the hands of the private company. The private company to which the Municipality has provided its property for 30 years is quite directly related to the persons we associate with the Kapitan Andreevo parking lot. In addition, financier Emil Harsev’s companies are currently the majority owner of „Tir Parking-Ruse“, which is now an Ltd., and in fact the same person is also the majority owner of the company that operates the Kapitan Andreevo parking lot. The Kapitan Andreevo model is working successfully and we are seeing serious requests for its multiplication. The Ministry of Interior and the Prosecutor’s Office should check what is happening and why in this way,“, the lawyer is adamant.
Lora Georgieva stressed that the big media are silent again. In her words, it took them about 3 years to investigate the Eight Dwarfs affair.
„Thus, the schemes for corrupt influence are neither investigated by the institutions, nor announced by the big TV channelsin the public space,“, the lawyer pointed out.
