Minister: Bulgaria's Land Swap Abuses Worth over BGN 1 B

The Bulgarian state lands that were swapped during the term of the Stanishev government are worth over BGN 1 B.

This was announced Thursday night by Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov, who also told the bTV channel that unfavorable land swap deals in his Ministry formerly controlled by the ethnic Turkish party DPS were carried out in such a way that senior DPS leaders avoided all responsibility.

Naydenov also said the government initially thought only 4 500 decares of forest plots had been restituted unlawfully to the former Tsar and PM Simeon Saxe-Coburg. However, with the aid of an outside consultant his Ministry found that all forest land amounting to 16 000 had been claimed illegally on the grounds that they allegedly belonged to the Bulgarian royal family before 1944.

On Wednesday, Naydenov filed a suit against Saxe-Coburg aiming to restore the state ownership on the forest plots located in the Rila Mountain, and claiming a BGN 5 M compensation over the logging activities that had been going on there in the last few years.

“I had no idea how Prime Minister Borisov would react when I showed him the documents proving the forests were given to Saxe-Coburg unlawfully but he showed no sign of hesitation,” Naydenov said. Bulgaria’s current Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, first entered politics as Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry in the government of Saxe-Coburg in 2001-2005.

Agriculture Minister Naydenov said the unblocking of the frozen SAPARD Program funds and the charging of his predecessor Valeri Tsvetanov with criminal breach of trust over the land swap deals were some of the greatest successes of the Borisov government in its first 100-day period that ended Wednesday.