There are irregularities worth millions in several areas in the "Road Infrastructure" Agency, said at a briefing the regional minister Nikolay Naydenov, quoted by dariknews.bg.
"On the first day of work of the new management of the RIA, I assigned a task to analyze the financial condition of the Agency. The findings are extremely worrying and raise suspicions of irregularities," he said, adding that at the beginning of the caretaker government, inspectorates were launched to carry out inspections.
The first area - the public procurement for the guardrails worth 590 million euros for a period of 5 years, the inspectorate's report is ready, numerous irregularities have been found and I have submitted it to the Ministry of Interior to familiarize Minister Dechev with it," he explained.
The second area is the contracts for ongoing repair and maintenance of the roads. "These contracts began to be signed after public procurements at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 and the total value was over 2 billion euros," said Naydenov. By February 19 of this year, the awards under these contracts were worth almost 100%. According to him, this budget was calculated for 4 years, and in a year and a half, 100% of the resources were spent on current repairs and maintenance.
"The main item from these assignments goes to the so-called "preventive repairs", which is an extremely vicious practice in RIA," he said.
The obligations of RIA to date are 528 million under these assignments, which have already been fulfilled, separately 168 million euros under court settlements and separately principal and interest on litigation - 55 million euros. In total, the RIA must pay contractors 752 million euros, the regional minister explained.
The road agency has a budget of 200 million euros, for March 34 million euros for maintenance and 42 million euros for new construction, April - 80 million euros for maintenance, 20 million for capital construction and for May - 17 million euros for maintenance and 5 million euros for capital construction - the new constructions "Hemus", "Struma", Vidin, Blagoevgrad, explained Naydenov.
He also said that there is another example of "bad planning" - the organization of the "Giro d’Italia". "In November 2025 with the organizers of the "Giro d’Italia" and with representatives of the RIA, an inspection of the route was carried out, assignments and protocols were made to meet all technical requirements for the introduction of the road in accordance with the needs of the competition. An assessment was made by the RIA for 10 million euros and the state provided the money. In just two months of planning and additional inspections - this amount has reached 55 million euros," he said.
Naydenov explained that control will be increased and the assignments and contracts will be made public, they will be uploaded to the Internet so that they are visible to everyone.