Daniela Peneva from ACF tells the BNR about the serious legal violations surrounding the deepening of the Varna Lake canals

Daniela Peneva, legal advisor at ACF, summarizes the legal violations committed in connection with the deepening of the Varna Port, one of the 116 cases that the Prosecutor’s Office failed to adequately react to according to the MoI:

The contracted activities were outsourced at least three times by public and private companies due to lack of capacity to perform the deepening works.

The in-house procurement is illegitimate, as the Bulgarian Ports Infrastructure Company outsourced to the company Transport Construction and Reconstruction (TCR), which however engages in railway track repairs and cannot carry out seaway deepening works. Eventually, TCR had to outsource to a private company, which in turn outsourced to the Russian company Gidrostroy.

TCR is a public contracting authority, and as such, is obliged to organize a procurement order. However, the state-owned company referred to its internal rules and used a previously prepared list of contractors to outsource the work to the private company S Build, which in turn outsourced to the Russian company.”

Daniela Peneva highlighted the fact that Transport Construction and Reconstruction is a state-owned company, which has refused to provide information about the project to its principal, the Ministry of Transport.

The justification for the refusal was that the prices quoted in the contract worth BGN 393 million represent confidential information.

We expect that our reports to the institutions will result in further information about the flow of money in this case, says Daniela Peneva.

The case was first reported by the journalist Spas Spasov.