The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) has accused the Health Minister Anna-Maria Borisova and three of her deputies of abuse of EU funds and corruption and has demanded their resignations.

On Tuesday, the leader of the Socialists, Sergey Stanishev, reminded of some, in his words, setup tenders for EU funding under the operational program "Regional development" for about BGN 147 M.

According to him, the technical specifics and the terms for conducting the tenders have been defined not by the Health Ministry and the state, but by a private company. In Stanishev's words, this equals corruption on a very high political level and abuse of EU funds.

"This is a huge scandal over conflict of interests and favoring the Health Ministry by the political leadership," he said, adding that BSP will approach the Prosecutor's Office on this case.

The Bulgarian socialists have said that on September 1 the website of the Health Ministry published a change in the approved drugs list. The change states that the medicines suppliers should perform clinical tests on medicines, even if they have been on the market for 10 years.

At the same time, Borisova's husband is the co-owner of a company for clinical tests, together with the husband of the Chair of the committee on the approved drugs list, Rusanka Kovacheva.

"These two ladies, which hold high positions in the Health Ministry, have changed the rules so that they could use their husbands' company," the DPS MP, Maya Manolova, said.

She pointed out that the company is a Center for clinical tests "Albright" and is registered at the address of Borisova, who was also co-owner of the company until recently.

Manolova has stated that the announced tenders had setup requirements in order to fit certain companies. She pointed out that last year a computer tomography equipment was bought for a hospital in the Bulgarian northern city of Ruse. At that time, the chair of the tender committee was the chair of the parliamentary health committee, Desislava Atanasova from the ruling party GERB.

According to the BSP MP, it was not clear how does the Health Ministry define which hospitals should receive oncological equipments. She noted that the hospital in the Bulgarian city of Montana has received such an equipment, while the oncological hospital is in the city of Vratsa.

"The deputy head Desislava Dimitrova should be responsible for the EU money abuse," Manolova said.

According to the socialists, the other deputy head, Gergana Pavlova, who is working in the field of medicine policies, has previously worked on a responsible position in a medicine supplying company, "Sopharma Trading", and is in a huge conflict of interests.

BSP reminded that the third deputy head, Ivan Milanov, was recently found to have millions of leva in his bank accounts, received from clinical tests, which he has appointed to himself as the head of the psychiatric clinic "Sveti Naum".

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