Eight persons have been charged with criminal association and abuse of EU funds, Deputy Prosecutor-General Ivan Geshev said at a press briefing, Focus News Agency reports.
Geshev said the investigation was supervised by the Special Prosecutor's Office, with the assistance of the State Agency for National Security and the Ministry of the Interior. "The subject of the pre-trial investigation is a criminal organisation whose main ‘commercial activity’ is abuse of EU funds," Geshev said. "The charges involve criminal association for all of [the eight persons] and in different configurations they are accused of abuse of EU funds,” he said. The charges are related to programmes for rural development and conversion of vineyards. These are different pre-trial proceedings from the one, in which Minyu Staykov was one of the accused, and these are programmes different from Young Farmer, he explained. He further said that EU funds had been granted under the two programmes, and the authorising officer was the Agriculture State Fund. "Under the Rural Development Programme, BGN 11.5 million had been requested and approved for payment, but as a result of the actions of the Prosecutor's Office, although rather difficult, this money has not been paid so far. More than BGN 7 million had been requested for conversion of vineyards and BGN 5 million had been received. And again, because of our active communication with the Agriculture State Fund, BGN 2 million had not been paid ", the said deputy chief prosecutor.

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