Bulgaria's Agriculture Ministry was raided last week over a tip-off of an illegal exchange of state woodland plots. Photo by Sofia Photo Agency
Bulgaria's agriculture minister has approved more than three hundred deals, in which state-owned land was swapped for private plots in less attractive or lower-priced parts of the country.
The figure is three times higher than the initially announced number of a hundred and twenty, which the press office of the ministry attributed to "a technical mistake".
Minister Valeri Tsvetanov greenlighted the deals since his appointment in April 2008.
The lists of land swap deals emerged days after Bulgaria's national security agency and prosecutors raided the Agriculture Ministry over a tip-off for large-scale illegal land swaps, one of the most widely spread corruption schemes. The names of companies and people, who swapped private for state-owned land plots, have been published online on the site of the department.
The prosecutor's office said documents for such deals have been backdated even though they were banned by law. The swaps took place over the last few years and involved huge plots in different regions of the country.