New details are coming to light regarding the scandal with the so-called “illegal city“ in the area “Baba Alino“ near Varna. After on Friday, the mayor of Varna Blagomir Kotsev announced that he was disciplinaryally dismissing the director of the Directorate “Management of Construction Control and Organization of Permit Regimes“ (USKOR) Alexander Dragnev due to shortcomings in the inspections of the site, Dragnev himself rejected the accusations.
“The mayor of Varna lied to all Bulgarians that he had an order for my disciplinary dismissal, which is categorically not true. I was only offered an agreement for termination by mutual consent, but I refused to sign it“, Dragnev told NOVA.
According to him, the first actions in the case began back in September 2024, when the Directorate sent a letter to the regional administration of “Primorski“. He pointed out that employees of the Economic Police at the ODMVR - Varna also worked on the signal. “After that, for nearly six months there was no information about what was happening in the case“, Dragnev also said.
He added that in January he received information that an admission for the development of a detailed development plan (DDP) for the “Baba Alino region had been signed and approved. “This led me to think that actions were being taken to legalize the site. We took action to stop the construction and issued the relevant acts and orders for the sites on which work was being done“, he explained.
Dragnev added that two acts were also drawn up to establish administrative violations for illegal logging in forest areas. According to him, the mayor Blagomir Kotsev was informed of all the actions taken. “I prepared a report with specific proposals for solving the problem, but this report remained without action“, claims the director of USKOR.