Two of Bulgaria's former Defense Ministers - Nikolay Tsonev (2008-2009) and Veselin Bliznakov (2005-2008) will most likely be interrogated over investigated violations.

This was announced Tuesday by Prosecutor Spas Iliev from the Military Prosecutor's Office.

Iliev said that Nikolay Tsonev had been investigated for his work in the period 1999-2000 for his work as the Director of Public Procurement Management Directorate at the Ministry of Defense. All three investigations of Tsonev's work were terminated because they were incomplete.

Now, the investigation against Tsonev will be resumed, and he could be charged if new evidence emerges.

So far the prosecutors have started 36 pre-court procedures for deals with properties owned by the Defense Ministry.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Sofia Prosecutor, Bozhidar Dzhambazov, announced that the Sofia Prosecutor's Office had started a procedure to investigate large-scale dereliction at the Defense Ministry acting upon evidence from one of the three folders with documentation submitted to the prosecutors by the new Defense Minister Mladenov last week.

The deal in question is for the purchase of a metal structures machinery for BGN 10 M without the VAT from a US company. It was made in June 2009, and was not signed by the former Minister, Nikolay Tsonev, but by another official.

The prosecutors believe that the deal is a violation of the Public Procurement Act, and that there was no need for the Ministry to purchase the machinery in question.

Minister Nikolay Mladenov announced about this deal last week, stressing that the machinery was stuck at the Customs of the Port of Varna, because the Defense Ministry had to pay the value-added tax of BGN 2 M in order to receive it. On top of that, the machine works with special kind of tin that is not produced in Bulgaria.

One of the other two folders submitted by Mladenov to the Prosecutor's Office includes evidence about violations of a contract for entertainment services for the army under which the Ministry paid about half a million BGN. The contract is a violation of the Public Procurement Act, according to Prosecutor Dzhambazov.

The third folder contains evidence about violations with the renting and usage of sports facilities owned by the Ministry.

The total of 36 procedures include investigations mostly of property deals but also of other type of contracts such as the purchase of ship engines in the city of Varna.

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