The tremors in the Sofia Municipality continue - a total of four municipal councilors and district mayors in Sofia left “We continue the change“ with accusations of corruption. The mayor of the “Lyulin“ district, Georgi Todorov, and municipal councilor Dimitar Shalafov announced that they have already given testimony. In turn, the mayor of the capital, Vasil Terziev, ordered urgent inspections of all public procurement in the capital's districts “Mladost“ and “Lyulin“.
In a raid by the Anti-Corruption Commission in Sofia Municipality yesterday, the deputy mayor with the portfolio of “European Policies, International Activities and Tourism“ Nikola Barbutov and three other individuals associated with commercial companies were detained.
And this morning on bTV, the mayor of the “Ilinden“ district; Emil Branchevski stated that he had been threatened by the co-chairman of “We Continue the Change“ Kiril Petkov with “spiritual destruction“ because he personally knows the patriarch. Branchevski was removed from office last summer due to allegations that he had a company in the UK and was subsequently reinstated by the Supreme Administrative Court.
Was there any pressure exerted and what is happening in the municipality, journalist Stoyana Georgieva and political analyst Georgi Harizanov comment on the program “This Morning“ on bTV.
“When I try to imagine the picture in which Kiril Petkov exerts pressure and threatens someone, it becomes very funny. Are you serious? The truth is that in recent years, people on the wave of changing things for the better voted for a huge number of political crooks and outright amateurs, who will continue to bother us with ridiculous nonsense such as, for example, that one threatened the other with spiritual destruction“, commented Georgi Harizanov.
“I think that one of the goals of this action (of the Anti-Corruption Commission) is exactly this - to sit all the media and try to figure out what is going on. But in black and white, what do we have - four figures from the local government, from the PP, who come out and say that they can no longer tolerate corruption pressure and do not provide any evidence, and have not previously notified either the prosecutor's office or the Anti-Corruption Commission, much less the party that has been exerting this pressure on them. Yesterday this thing was happening in the municipality and all this is based on unofficial information, we will not have official information“, said Stoyana Georgieva.
The mayor of Sofia, Vasil Terziev, stood behind his deputy, but ordered an internal audit of public procurement in the direction for which he was responsible.
„At the same time, it is an indisputable fact for me that there is a problem with the Public Procurement Office – there is definitely a breakthrough. I will not rush to say what it is about, but trust – the most valuable political capital, in the face of such events, melts“, she added.
„Without questioning the words of the people, they stand by their names and speak openly, they still have to defend their claims, because people forget that the opposing party can seek legal responsibility for defamation and slander, and then these claims must be proven. "Then it got complicated," said Harizanov.