The Prosecutor's Office, the Anti-Corruption Commission and the State Agency for National Security and Anti-Corruption are not fulfilling their main function of revealing and investigating crimes, and in a number of cases “hide information“.
This was stated in "Panorama" by Nikolai Denkov, Deputy Chairman of “We Continue the Change“ and chairman of its parliamentary group, former prime minister.
According to him, this is the reason for new corruption scandals and the lack of effective results in landmark cases.
Denkov stressed that it is important to have a normal dialogue between the ruling majority and the opposition.
"The issue is to have a normal dialogue in which, when they do something right, we congratulate them, when they do something wrong - to criticize them and to seek an appropriate solution. I can immediately give two examples. One is that when talking about the miserable state of the Bulgarian economy, let's say that we are one of the best developing economies in Europe in recent years.
So here we need to balance a little the desire to show how much we are doing on a bad basis and what the real data is. A few years ago, Bulgaria was first, second, fifth in industrial development in Europe, so there is something to build on and, of course, there is still much to do. Another example that I will give is related to raising the question of the tragic legacy that is being received.
Let me remind you that exactly 5 years ago, Kiril Petkov, Assen Vassilev, being the Minister of Economy, raised the same question about this company “Montazhi“, in which 600 million leva were given, and the money was still missing. But instead of justifying ourselves by saying that the previous ones ruined things, a correct budget was made. This budget ended 2021 in an extremely difficult situation - COVID, an energy crisis that was then beginning.
All this was done, the deficit was within the right framework, so it is good to balance a little what we inherit with what can be done. And what we expect from the government is also to fulfill the requests and promises it has made to the people.
For example, a request that is very ambitious and I would be very happy if it happened was made yesterday by the Minister of Agriculture and Food, who said that he expects that as a result of these measures, the basic food basket will become cheaper by 10 to 30% within a month. This is a very serious request. If this happens, we will congratulate them. Of course, it must be sustainable, but if it does not happen - we will criticize them, not because we did not support the measures, we will support them in the National Assembly - they also have a majority, but because we have doubts that some of them will not work. "
Regarding the case of the "illegal city" near Varna, Denkov commented:
"There are many discussions about issues such as who and what ownership, how the sustainability of these buildings has changed, etc. I want to put the whole case in another context – the context of “Montazhi“, of "Hemus", of Corpbank, let's go back further, to the hundreds of millions that disappeared due to the poorly written law related to the lottery and lotteries. What is the commonality? The commonality is that we have basic institutions that should work in every country – prosecutor's office,
Anti-Corruption Commission and SANS – which in all these cases, instead of working to uncover the crimes, conduct pre-trial proceedings and file cases, and end these cases with a verdict for those who are guilty, it actually turns out that these institutions hide the information and ultimately the court cases end with the prosecution being convicted, because it did not do its job and accused people who cannot be convicted. So the real problem in this case is that when there are signals, none of these institutions has initiated the process that would stop these crimes as quickly as possible."
When asked if the mayor of Varna is responsible for the case, Denkov replied:
"I don't know. The institutions should do this and say who is responsible, who is guilty and who should be tried. And I would just like to point out that the mayor of Varna was absent from his office for quite a while…"