Regional Governor of Burgas Plamen Yanev, warned about numerous deals involving municipal property. He revealed that in the last months of his mandate, the municipal councils in the district were suddenly selling off land.
One of the recent examples is in Tsarevo Municipality, where the local municipal council decided to sell nearly 730 hectares of municipal agricultural land in the locality of Verguti. The decision was suspended by the Regional Governor on the grounds that the municipal councillors had not been provided with all the information about the property. Currently, this property has a permanent use status of „vineyard“ and it has a lease agreement with a duration of 35 years. This circumstance is not indicated either in the circumstantial part of the report or in the draft decision submitted to the Municipal Council.
The lack of provision of complete information violates a basic principle of the Administrative Procedure Code, namely the duty of the administrative body to ensure openness, confidentiality and completeness of information in administrative proceedings.
„The Municipality of Tsarevo has a long-term financial plan to receive income from the real estate on a regular basis, and at the end of this period – 2049, it will remain the owner of the property. Incomplete information about the property’s characteristics hinders an objective assessment of the most favorable option for the Municipality,“, Yanev commented.
Currently, the Regional Administration is closely monitoring the decisions of the other municipal councils, as a increase in transactions has been observed in the last months before the vote.
