New Chair Digs into Alleged Abuses of Former Bulgarian Parliament

Politics » DOMESTIC | August 11, 2009, Tuesday // 15:07
Bulgaria: New Chair Digs into Alleged Abuses of Former Bulgarian Parliament Parliament Chair Tsacheva gave her first formal press conference on Tuesday. Photo by BGNES

The Chair of Bulgaria's Parliament, Tsetska Tsacheva announced Tuesday that two pre-court inspections were investigating the public procurement deals of the 40th National Assembly, i.e. the former Parliament.

The investigations are in progress at the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office, and are focusing on inspecting the activities of some of the top-level employees at the Parliament administration.

The prosecutors are going to investigate why the Parliament paid almost 300 000 for the upcoming installation of two elevators, and if the repairs of the Parliament-owned apartments in Sofia did in fact cost BGN 800 000.

Last week Tsacheva received the resignation of the Parliament Secretary, Ognyan Avramov, over the housing issues with the property of the Parliament, and "unsound arguments for his actions".

A working group of the GERB party has expected the car services of the Parliament, and found that before June 1, 2009, the former MPs spent a total of BGN 334 000 on business trips around the country while they were not supposed to spend more than BGN 40 000; some of the drivers are found to have worked over 600 hours overtime for 2008, and some of the car that were bought at the end of 2006, have traveled over 300 000 km.

In what was her first official press conference, Tsacheva denied the publications that appeared in the Bulgarian media on Tuesday that she had been on a vacation at the government's Black Sea residence at Euxinograd near Varna. She said she had never visited the residence in question.

Tsacheva vowed to make far-reaching changes into the structure of the Parliament administration, and said that maybe more than 5% of the administrators there would be laid off.

She also announced that a new security equipment that was bought in 2006 but had been stored in the basement of the parliamentary building ever since would be installed. The new equipment registers the exact time of entering and leaving the Parliament, and the MPs would have to check in with their MP cards. The new system is seen as part of the solution to the issue of one MP voting with the cards of several other deputies.

 

 

 

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Tags: Tsetska Tsacheva, parliament, public procurement procedure, investigation, Ognyan Avramov

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