Bulgaria’s President, Georgi Parvanov, has accused Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, of lying about last week’s case in which the Presidency bank account suddenly turned out to be empty.

In an interview for a bTV talk show, President Parvanov said the Finance Ministry had deliberately emptied his institution’s bank account.

“These payments are documented according to a special system. Yesterday, Djankov told several lies within three minutes. He says the payment was delayed, which is not true because the money were allocated the next day, after our strong reaction. Djankov claims there had been a technical mistake – the odds for such a random mistake is like winning the lottery jackpot. We are creating a precedent here in which the Bulgarian head of state was left without any money,” Parvanov declared.

He explained that last Monday there were BGN 30 000 in the account of the Presidency, then another 200 000 were transferred on Tuesday, and then all 230 000 were withdrawn by the Finance Ministry on Wednesday.

The President has commented that there was tension between him and Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. He said he had principled differences with the cabinet’s anti-crisis program, insisting the state should encourage consumption.

He criticized the government for delaying many payments owed to firms over public procurement procedures, which led to their bankruptcies and layoffs of workers. In his words, the delayed sums owed to firms by the state amounted to 1,5% of the GDP.

“I don’t like this “culinarization” of the political debate,” Parvanov said regarding Finance Minister Simeon Djakov’’s presentation of the state budget as a “meatless pizza”.

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