The Ministry of Economy will cooperate with the Anti-Corruption Fund to stop abuses of public resources

The Ministry of Economy and Industry and the Anti-Corruption Fund (ACF) will cooperate to ensure maximum transparency and stop abuse of public funds. This became clear at a meeting of the Minister of Economy and Industry Bogdan Bogdanov with the director of ACF Boyko Stankushev, the co-founder of the Fund Nikolay Staykov and the senior legal associate Adv. Laura Mateeva.

Minister Bogdanov pointed out that the cooperation with proven experts in the field of anti-corruption will guarantee transparent processes and protection of the public interest in the case of detected abuses of public funds in the Ministry's wards, including in state-owned companies.

"One of our main goals is to stop inefficient management and restore people's trust in institutions by showing that they can work transparently," said the Minister of Economy.

The Anti-Corruption Fund commented that in order to restore trust in the institutions, there must be a result of the interaction on specific cases of high public interest related to misuse of state funds.

Some of the examples that were discussed are the established number of abuses and violations in the management of public enterprises from previous years, including the awarding of nearly BGN 800 million without public procurement. Among them are over BGN 500 million for the repair of dams, the unrealized government complex and the series of contracts concluded for the transfer of claims by the State Consolidation Company (SCC).

Minister Bogdanov was categorical that the inefficient and non-transparent management of the companies should not continue.

"So far, we have taken all the necessary actions according to law to recover state funds. We returned the first BGN 45 million to DCK from the company that was entrusted with the implementation of the project for the unrealized government complex. We also repaid the loan of DCK to the Bulgarian Development Bank, in the amount of BGN 126.4 million, so that the public enterprises that were pledged as collateral for this loan could be released.

According to him, in this way, the payment of the accumulated interest on the loan, which so far alone amounts to BGN 22 million, has been stopped. With the repayment of the loan, the companies will be able to develop and contribute a dividend to the budget, instead of continuing to pay interest on the loan.