A deputy executive director of the State Agriculture Fund and a deputy minister who was for a short time a ministerial nominee. These are the main characters in the guest-house saga involving misuse of European funds.
The latest series featured the deputy executive director of the State Agriculture Fund, Ivanka Bagdatova-Mizova, who had to resign. The reason was information that her phone number was given on a website for booking Tara guest house in the village of Yundola. The case will be investigated.
Deputy minister of economy Alexander Manolev has already been charged by the prosecution with undermining the financial interest of the European Union. That followed an investigation of a guest house he used with his family as private property.
Sin program
The scandal about Manolev was so huge that the whole government had to explain itself. In a situation of European elections the guest-house damage could turn out bigger than the scandal about the cheap apartments bought by power holders. In his usual manner in such cases prime minister Boyko Borisov differentiated himself and voiced dissatisfaction with the inefficiency of the state administration, which had failed to established the violations in the financing of guest houses with European funds.
As if Borisov has not been head of that same state administration for 10 years now!
Official data show that 746 guest houses have been built under the Rural Development Program 2007-13. The executive director of the Agriculture Fund, Rumen Porozhanov, admitted that the effect of the EU-funded guest house projects was unclear and that the check-ups covered 17% of them.
Following the media findings about the house used by Manolev, the prosecution also joined the chorus trying to minimize the damage from the scandal. The state prosecutor’s office announced it would investigate all EU-funded guest-house projects. At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday prime minister Boyko Borisov threatened that the Revenue Agency and the Interior Ministry would also participate in the check-ups. In his words the investigation would cover everything from business plans to the construction companies hired.
Actually, the problem is quite simple. The guest-house series is only the visible part, the small window through which one can get a glimpse of the misuses performed in the Agriculture Fund.
Ever since its establishment it has not been a structure aimed at supporting diligent Bulgarian agricultural producers but a mechanism for creating corruption levers. The Agriculture Fund is a cancer cell. A tumor. It cannot be cured with resignations. The only working mechanism is to dissolve it and create a brand new body to manage agriculture in Bulgaria; to manage the subsidies to the advantage of farmers and not to the advantage of the thugs that control the sector.
Bagdatova-Mizova, who was ousted as an emergency measure, is a long-standing employee of the Agriculture Fund. She has occupied various positions since 2003 and since 2017 she has been deputy director in charge of agricultural market mechanisms, short-term support schemes, investment support schemes and maritime and fisheries. The fact that a person in such a position can be involved in such an elementary scheme of misuse – and so openly at that – is indicative of the condition of the Agriculture Fund, its control mechanisms and the control services in the state administration in general.
Borisov’s anger is understandable. But his anger is not about the fact that there are misuses in his government. Otherwise he would have dissolved the Agriculture Fund and a number of other compromised structures overnight. He may even assign the task to his members of parliament, as he regularly does, if the question is not in the powers of the Council of Ministers.
No, Borisov is angry, because the shady deals have been brought to light. That the people finally see them visualized in their purest form. In the form of apartments and houses.
