EPPO head Laura Kövesi has accused former Varna mayor Ivan Portnih of Borissov’s GERB of defrauding EU funds in connection with the reconstruction of a fishing port that never existed, in the first major EU prosecutor’s case against high-level corruption in Bulgaria.
Defendants in the case include Portnih and three other civil servants in various positions.”The four are accused of forging official documents and submitting false information in order to illegally receive EU funds for a €3.4 million project, co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund,” the European Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Friday.
In 2018, the Municipality of Varna applied for a project to ‘reconstruct’ and renovate the ‘Karantinata’ fishing harbour at the southern end of the beach in its Asparuhovo district. However, an investigation by the EU prosecutor’s office revealed that there was never a port there.
The EPPO found it after over two years of work on the case, while Bulgarian journalists wrote about the scandal three years ago. The report to the European Prosecutor General, Laura Kövesi, was submitted by OLAF.
“Our investigation indicates that, to be able to benefit from EU funds exclusively dedicated to the improvement of the infrastructure of existing fishing ports, the beneficiary assembled several pontoons as floating piers, with the sole purpose of registering the site as an existing harbour. In addition, the beneficiary presented false information and did not include all the documents required by the national legislation to obtain the necessary certificates,” the EPPO said.
The political go-ahead for the project to build a fishing port in Varna was apparently given in 2018 after a visit to the city by then prime minister and current GERB leader Boyko Borissov, a check by Euractiv Bulgaria shows. This is clear from a video posted on YouTube by Borissov’s team.
The now-former prime minister told local journalists and the Bishop of Varna that the site where the fishing port was to be built consisted of “just a few stones”.
He showed the journalists architectural plans of the project and made it clear that he knew the site where the port would be built very well, even having been there.
“There is no beach, no boulders, we have to develop this thing,” Borissov told journalists, showing them the designs and speaking as if he had been to the area and knows full well that there has never been an old port there to be redeveloped.
This is not the only major European project in the city of Varna being investigated by EU prosecutors. In 2022, the Bulgarian Anti-Corruption Commission said it had found irregularities in the public procurement of 60 new electric buses for the city and sent the case for investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bulgaria. There is no public information on what has happened to this investigation.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
