Conservative Leader Calls for Declassifying Bulgaria's Crown Agents Contracts

The Order, Law and Justice party (RZS) has called for declassification of the three contracts with the company consulting Bulgaria's Customs Agency, the private Crown Agents, according to party leader Yane Yanev.

Yanev asked how much money the "agents of the crown" received, and for what services. He pointed out that two of the contracts would probably be declassified, but access to the third had been denied, reports BGNES.

According to Yanev, the value of the three signed contracts is over BGN 70 M.

“Into which political pockets have the commissions gone, and what exactly have they consulted the Customs on? The headquarters of Crown Agents denied access to the third contract even to the Finance Minister,” he stated Monday.

“Such a contract does not exist in any other European country, as far as figures show. What was it that they consulted the Customs on, if the contraband channels at that time and the customs fraud schemes, including the pan-European ones increased in the past 6-7 years, from the time they are with the Customs?” commented the RZS leader.

He asked for an immediate answer to be given to confirm whether the amount for contracts concluded so far was BGN 70 M, and the contracts themselves be presented to the Anticorruption Commission by the Crown Agents.

The Bulgarian Finance Ministry and the Crown Agents have signed a contract for completion of the second phase of the Program for Modernisation of the Bulgarian Financial Administration. The contract proposed a continuation of the program activities undertaken during the first phase.

The consultancy had reported on the system for registration according to the law on VAT; uncovering VAT fraud; the development of the approach by the National Revenue Agency (NRA) towards managing risk; improving the exchange of information; modernisation of the Customs Agency; training and development of mobile groups; control over excises; and usage of IT systems for prevention of corruption and crime.

"BGN 1 M will be taken from the budget of the Presidency, to compensate the so-called Kushlev commission budget, already trimmed by BGN 2 M,” said Yanev.

"In this way we will satisfy the President too in his wish to fight corruption, the mafia and organised crime, and I reckon that [President Parvanov] would gladly accept such a proposal, because the Minister of Finance went along it", he stated.

Yanev also met with Simeon Djankov, who accepted his suggestions regarding direct subsidies for agricultural producers, and supported his proposal to raise excise duty on alcohol and beer, to bring it into line with other European countries.

Crown Agents has been providing consultancy services to the Bulgarian government since 2001. All the services they have provided have been directly financed by the Bulgarian government itself.

For many years Crown Agents was a British public corporation. In 1997 it transferred to the private sector as a limited company owned by a new entity, The Crown Agents Foundation.