The former Finance Minister Asen Vassilev had a team of trusted people in the Ministry of Finance. They are not appointed with an employment contract to councilor positions, but on civil contracts, some of which are worth more than the councilor salary cap.
This taught “Voices“ from its own sources, and the information was subsequently confirmed by a reference provided under the Law on Access to Public Information. There were no contracts with small consulting teams, for example. Everything was with individuals, in their personal capacity.
The least problematic thing is that there were people working in the Ministry of Finance who are not on the list of the minister's political cabinet. If an MP asks what the minister's entourage is, they will not be covered by the list of persons for whom he has express political responsibility. A question that needs to be clarified is whether there is an attempt to avoid the Public Procurement Act. According to it, when a service is provided worth more than BGN 80,000, the contracting authority must organize a competition to determine a supplier/contractor. The alternative explanation – concealment of labor activity cannot be ruled out either.
The members of the political cabinet are responsible for the most mysterious and most delicate part of the work of politicians. For example, they can meet on behalf of the minister and deliver messages. For an outsider to enter a ministry, he must be accompanied by an official – most often from the “Protocol and Public Relations” directorate, but not only. Its entry is recorded and known. However, this is not the case when the minister or deputy minister or their trusted person introduces an external person. Then the security company employees standing at the entrance pretend to be distracted because they don't want to lose their already small salaries. Similar is the scandal with the entry of a father and son, accused of being smugglers, to an interior minister. The testimony of one of the security guards at the Ministry of Finance indicates that the same father and son also visited the Ministry of Finance (Asen Vassilev denies having met with them), namely, introduced by a confidant of the minister.
We asked the Ministry of Finance with how many persons and how many civil contracts were concluded in the period from June 2023 to April 2024, as well as the duration of the relevant contracts and the payment that the contractors should receive by fulfilling them.
The reference shows that the Ministry of Finance concluded 35 contracts with 33 natural persons in the covered period, which coincides with the last administration of Asen Vassilev. The most significant are the payments to the two people with whom two contracts were concluded. Arranged by the date of conclusion, person number 15 signed a contract with a term of six months for 24,500 leva, and a month after its expiration another one with a term of 12 months, for which he must take 60,000 leva. In this case, the total value of the two contracts exceeds the threshold under the ZOP, but one month has passed between the conclusion of the first and the conclusion of the second contract, and at no time during the 12 months has the amount formed reached the threshold under the ZOP.
Person number 17 signed his first contract on August 11 to December 31 last year and its value was BGN 15,000. His second contract was from February 20 this year to December 31, with a value of BGN 21,360.
A total of five people signed contracts for five-figure sums, of which only one was for less than BGN 20,000. One person took BGN 20,000 under a contract that he completed in just 17 days. Eight contracts worth between BGN 300 and 900, which were concluded and executed exactly in one day, stand out. on July 1, 2023.
The most famous of the contract executors is lawyer Dimitar Gochev, former deputy of "We continue the change", unfortunate parliamentary assistant of deputies from the "We continue the change". We wrote about him that he consulted on the audit in the Judicial Protection Directorate, which ended without findings of irregularities and without proposals for reorganization. Despite the results of the audit, which he consulted, Gochev, in the capacity of a consultant, participated in the preparation of rules for the selection of lawyers to represent Bulgaria in the case brought by the crypto group Nexo. Last week we wrote that after no irregularities were found in the audit, Gochev's participation in the talks and the subsequent drawing up of the rules shows that the employees in the directorate are not viewed with full confidence and the consultant participates to keep the minister calm. This is a job specifically for an adviser and a member of the political cabinet, so that it is clear who is responsible if negative things arise from his participation.
Right after the inclusion of Dimitar Gochev, the Ministry of Finance for the first time started looking for lawyers specifically for one case. In the previous two decades, the practice was to select two firms with which to conclude fixed-term framework agreements, and when cases arose within this term, they were distributed among the firms with contracts for the award under conditions that were agreed in advance.
Although the reference of the Ministry of Finance does not indicate by name the people, counterparties to the contracts, from its own sources “Voices” knows that the contract with Dimitar Gochev is from June 20 last year. This date coincides only with the conclusion of the contract with Person 15, which we mentioned in the reference, and which has two contracts for a total of BGN 84,500 with a break of one month between the two. According to a separate request under the PDOI, the Ministry of Finance replied to "Voices" that Dimitar Gochev had four trips abroad, the expenses of which were covered by the Ministry of Finance. Two two-day trips to Tirana and Brussels took place in August and December last year. From January 4 to 9 this year, he traveled to Athens, and from February 11 to 18 in New York. The financing of all his trips was based on the Ordinance on business trips and specializations abroad.
Until now, Asen Vassilev was known to subject Bulgaria to chronic indebtedness through his policy of deficits. His practice of betting on the need for loans to be drawn by the ministers after him has already cost Bulgaria more than a billion leva in the form of higher interest rates, because he did not draw the loans when he could and should have. Proceeding from an argumentation that does not pass a basic logical test for expediency, Vassilev declared war on his own administration, trying to close one of the most successful directorates in the ministry. In this way, several times Bulgaria threatened to lose billions, and the danger has not yet completely disappeared. However, there has never been such an escape from responsibility. To conclude 35 contracts with 33 persons, given that under previous ministers such contracts were counted on the fingers, reflects not only Vassilev's desire to weaken the state administration, but also to do it without being visibly connected to the consequences, through the people, who are employed. A pure example of shirking responsibility.