The newly appointed Governor of the southern Bulgarian District of Kardzhali, Ivanka Taushanova, has uncovered scandalous violations of the previous district administration.

At a press conference on Monday, Taushanova explained that the team of her predecessor, Angel Kodzhamanov, has been involved in scandalous swap deals with public property and abuse of public funds.

Taushanova, who was appointed District Governor of Kardzhali two weeks ago by the new Bulgarian government of the GERB party, has discovered that instead of renting or selling public property in order to raise revenue, the previous District Governor administration executed a number of clearly unfavorable to the state property swap deals.

The violations include a plot of 915 square meters in downtown Kardzhali swapped for an apartment in distant quarter, and three plots with a total area of 6 118 square meters near the city bus station swapped for a smaller plot near the Gorubso Stadium. Both incurred tangible losses to the District Administration because the plots were swapped for much cheaper property.

Taushanova also stressed that the spending of the previous district administration was enormous and haphazard, and that because of that, her administration would be in great financial trouble.

Of the BGN 110 000 projected spending for 2009, BGN 94 500 were spent in the first seven months alone, which is 86%. This means that for the remaining months, the administration is left with only BGN 3 000 per month, while it needs about BGN 6 000 per month to function properly.

Taushanova revealed that the money spent for the repair of the 5 administration cars were enough to buy one more car. Her predecessor also spent enormous sums of money on flowers and wreaths and ceremonial decorations that were bought exclusively from one store, owned by the Deputy Mayor of the city of Kardzhali, Nurdzhan Yusein.

"I hope that now the citizens will excuse our modest bouquets and wreath that we will probably have to prepare ourselves from now on. My predecessor literally bought the Hanging Gardens of Babylon," Taushanova declared. She is going to refer the violations to the respective authorities.

The District of Kurdzhali has a large population from Bulgaria's ethnic Turkish minority, and is known as a stronghold of the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS).

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