Bulgaria PM Scolds Minister over Remark on Ex-Tsar's Forests

Bulgaria's Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, admitted Saturday he had reprimanded his Agriculture Minister, Miroslav Naydenov, over a recent remark.

Naydenov recently said he expected the state to win the suits against former Tsar and former PM Simeon Saxe-Coburg for the annulling the restitution of 16 000 decares of forests (plots allegedly owned by the Bulgarian royal family by 1944), and for a BGN 5 M compensation for logging activities over the last few years.

“Minister Naydenov made a gross blunder. He just restated what he heard from the law firm that the government hired. I have personally passed a remark on him for that because he put the court in a very inconvenient situation by saying the government would win the case,” Borisov told Nova TV.

Borisov himself started his political career as Interior Ministry Secretary in the Saxe-Coburg government in 2001-2005. Since taking office, however, his government has taken steps to revise the procedures through which the former monarch received back nationalized properties. The GERB cabinet wants the lands back over a number of alleged violations. Saxe-Coburg got the lands restituted to him during his term as Prime Minister (2001-2005).

• 1