Bulgarian children are dying on Bulgaria's poor-quality roads, money is stolen, the asphalt is eaten away, there are no markings, no signs and there is no control over people with bundles. There is no quality healthcare, because the money from the Health Fund has been drained and caps are collected for the treatment of children. And this is so because everything is feudalized, and in our economy there is only room for the hoops of companies close to the government... Where are we going? Rosen Milenov, a former employee of the National Agency for National Security and Defense, spoke to FACTI.
- Mr. Milenov, we want 6% of a public procurement contract - this is what we heard from “We continue the change“, which was less than GERB, who wanted 20%. Is this how politics is done in Bulgaria - with the pursuit of percentages to fill the party coffers?
- If we talk about the established practice of the size of commissions, it is about 20%, 50%, and in some cases over 50% of a public procurement contract. They are trying to return 50% of the amount to guarantee that you will win the contract. 99% of the contracts are set up for the specific company. The mechanisms for damage are either accepting larger quantities (for example, in road construction, cubes of material from excavations, embankments, etc.), or using low-quality materials (for example, insulation materials, paints, etc. in building renovations). At the same time, the use of such procedures under the Public Procurement Act (PPA) is abused, which lack transparency and eliminate competition, because they are intended to be applied in the presence of extraordinary circumstances. An example of one of the most frequently applied ones is the negotiation procedure without announcement.
- But is this the point of politics? Is this how politics is done in Bulgaria - to ask for money from public procurement in order to fill the party coffers…
- Look, public procurement - and more specifically the abuses in them, have become a factor in the last 15 years, since a lot of EU funds have entered Bulgaria and capital funds in general have increased in the budget. Public procurement is the "boutique corruption" of our political "elite", because it is divided between two - the client and the contractor. Whether it is the mayor and the construction company, or the director of the municipal hospital and the supplier of medicines, etc., the commissions that go through these public procurements are billions of leva every year. So any normal person, if they do some simple arithmetic and deduct these 20, 30, 50% from the value of the public procurement, will understand the extent of the robbery. I have already given the example of a former prime minister, whose commission from a public procurement for a certain infrastructure project - for example, a section of a highway, is 15 million leva. This is the corruption of politicians - and, yes, it fills the party coffers, fills the offshore accounts of politicians and oligarchs. In connection with the above-mentioned example of a commission for highway repairs, it can be said that the largest public procurement contracts in terms of value are awarded by the Road Infrastructure Agency (API) in the amount of 300, 600, 800 million leva each, for which 30 companies are “subscribed”. About 10 of them are owned - through proxy persons, by Borisov and Peevski. The others are subject to direct negotiation, that is, how much will return to the politicians. This is “boutique corruption”, this is the abuses worth billions. Every year, 5 billion leva is the damage to the budget, that is, to the taxpayer, from abuses in public procurement.
- 5 billion leva per year. This is a serious amount…
- This is known by the services, the prosecutor's office and the administrative control bodies - the CPC, the ADFI, the Court of Auditors, including the court (VAS). These 5 billion leva were stolen, they are “blood money”. Let's take the last serious traffic accident in which little Siyana died. What do we have there? We have a clear example of poor-quality repairs, of poor-quality pavement, which became the main cause of the accident. In addition to the above-mentioned institutions, every citizen can check on the website of the Public Procurement Agency (PPA) what the total annual value of orders for the last four years is. On average, it is around 20 billion leva, and last year it was 30 billion leva. Not all of them have been paid, because there are contracts that will be implemented for several years. But let's say that some 20 billion leva are put into circulation every year through the so-called capital expenditures and they go for public services – repairs, supplies of goods and services in various sectors such as energy, healthcare, water supply and railway infrastructure. If we add the amount of commissions - here is 5 billion leva. 5 billion are “lost”, in reality they are not lost, but go to precisely defined people and then elections are bought with them, majorities are bought in parliament and in municipal councils. Voters think they voted for patriots, democrats, leftists, rightists, anti-corruption activists and whatever you can think of, with each formation having an “ideology” that serves only for political “camouflage”, while behind the scenes, in reality we have killer economic majorities - in parliament or in localities. And it is precisely through these economic majorities that these public procurements and all other illegal schemes and appointments of puppets to key leadership positions in the state pass.
- Let's go back to the scandal in “We continue the change“, considering the departing mayors and municipal councilors. Is this the goal of politics in Bulgaria - you enter politics to make money?
- That's how it turns out. And this has already been proven to be a practice for decades. Before, the schemes were different, but, as I mentioned, for about 15 years, public procurements have emerged as the main pen. A pen through which the power is criminally fed. The result of these practices is that we have billionaire former prime ministers, millionaire mayors and ministers, and increasingly thin pockets of ordinary Bulgarians.
- We saw how the bags from the construction of the “Hemus “ highway are being taken out, and there is nothing new in the investigation at the moment?
- As with all other investigations at the highest levels of power. The money is gone, it has not been returned to its rightful owner - the state, it has simply been stolen. 5 billion leva is not a small amount of money every year, a loss for the state. But it also has a purpose, because at some point it is used to buy elections. And what comes out of it - the state, from an institution that should serve the people, turns into a private structure. Why? Because all institutions that should serve the state, the law, and protect the interests of citizens have turned into private ones. And this means that they work solely in private interest. Now Borisov and Peevski own the “private state”. But how is power bought? It is tied up. If you start with the right of citizens to choose, which our politicians reproduce. When you buy elections, you buy power, you acquire power. Here, in the last elections, Peevski got 300,000 votes. We have “buying” of souls, but these "souls" give him representation in parliament, and it carries power. Here he has the "private state", then the "private institutions", etc. In this regard, we saw how the new chairman of the CPC - Rosen Karadimov - was elected as if by notes. A trusted person of Peevski, and the CPC is the main control body that monitors public procurement. Another control body, legally charged with controlling the spending of funds on public procurement, is the State Financial Inspection Agency (SFI), of which Lyudmila Petkova was appointed as chairman, again a protégé of Peevski. And we come to the judicial control by the Supreme Administrative Court in the person of Cholakov - again a Peevski man. I deliberately do not include the prosecutor's office, because it is clear even to small children that it belongs to Peevski. And the services... I cannot help but mention the services. The previous chairman of the State Agency for National Security and Defense, Plamen Tonchev, was appointed to the post by the first caretaker government of President Radev. Tonchev was appointed to the post with the guarantee of the energy oligarch Lyudmil Stoykov, who has had an interest in public procurement for the supply and repair of facilities at the Kozloduy NPP for years. The State Agency for National Security and Defense, has an “Energy” sector, in which every week all state-owned energy companies are obliged to submit all contracts and other information in connection with the fact that these companies are part of the critical infrastructure. And here I draw attention to the fact that the services know about the abuses, about the companies, about the so-called political influence on the respective manager. Everything is known, but there is no result. The damage from all this has no value, no size, because it subordinates the state, crushes the law, crushes the public interest. I say again - this is “blood money”. The only effective and objective control over public funds can only be implemented by civil society. That's why I'm talking about a mechanism for civil control against payment on a rotational basis, so that none of these politically appointed heads of various state commissions can cover up their "bosses".
- After the upheavals in “We continue the change“ do you expect a new reshuffle in the opposition in parliament?
- Opposition in parliament!? There is no opposition. And it's been like that for decades. My understanding of opposition is to demand information about where the money goes from illegal schemes - the offshore accounts of politicians and their front persons, who keep everything under control, to shed light on schemes - not only from public procurement, from smuggling, from concessions, to shed light on tax umbrellas and so on. To demand sensitive information and thus provide transparency about the companies that participate in these schemes and their connections with specific politicians. That is, the opposition must do everything that the institutions of the “private state” whether in the face of the prosecutor's office, the police, or the administrative control bodies are trying to hide, that is, to put all these private institutions of Borisov and Peevski before a fait accompli. With the presence of the opposition in parliament since the beginning of the year, the puppets of Peevski and Borisov were elected as the heads of the above-mentioned institutions. That is why I answer the question that for me, the opposition does not exist in Bulgaria.
Here “We continue the change” have an agreement with GERB and Peevski at the national level, and in return they are left to absorb in Sofia, that is, all the companies from the GERB era and associated with Peevski continue to win public procurement contracts for repairs and concessions for cleanliness, and small companies gravitating around people associated with the PP are trying to enter this criminal and parceled market. And you saw what happened. The PP are “assemblers” and will remain so. Now let them reap the bitter fruits of this playing with the pussies.
That is why I answer the question that for me, the opposition does not exist in Bulgaria. I am not talking only about today, but about the ruling circus of the last three decades.
- Are we ready for the euro? This is the topic that is currently worrying us all. We have six months, if the Eurogroup report is also accepted in early July. So we will certainly be paying in euros from next year?
- Anyone who understands a little about economics and finance can see the trends in the economy and public finances of Bulgaria, namely an increasingly anemic economy and increasingly thin budget revenues. This is due to the structure of our economy - resource-based, Islamic and overgrown with all forms of monopoly, that is, we work to accumulate billions in profits for local oligarchs and foreign companies, part of which is returned to politicians. With this economy, we cannot move forward, but only get stuck, especially those 70% of the population with monthly incomes of up to 2 thousand leva. We have galloping prices for everything, growing intensively, especially in recent weeks. Including the problem of the labor shortage, which is still going to get worse, things are extremely worrying. I am convinced that it is vital for us to have an economy with authentic Bulgarian final products, with high added value, that is, for us to process our resources, this means high salaries, high pensions, and not Islamic ones. It is time to put an end to working for the development of foreign economies. For this economy, it is necessary to have an independent monetary policy, that is, to preserve the leva, so that we can make exports competitive on international markets. But the politicians who want to push us into the eurozone are driven by the fact that every country that has joined is starting to accumulate public debt (today the majority of the eurozone members have a debt of over 150% of GDP), and this means that they will have to patch up the budget situation for several more years, and accordingly their schemes for robbery. Of course, later this money will be returned, by selling everything - ports, airports, highways. And not least in defense of the lev is the fact that you leave your monetary policy in the hands of the European Central Bank, where decisions are made by the old members, because their votes have greater weight in voting, and the rule is that whoever controls the money controls everything.