A former Mayor of Vidin, a city in the northwest of Bulgaria, and a municipal councilor have been found guilty of embezzling funds from the municipal budget.

The District Court of Montana, another city in the region, has sentenced Rumen Vidov and councilor Milena Milanova to four-and-a-half year of imprisonment each.

The sum for the embezzlement of which they have been convicted is BGN 103 820 (approximately EUR 53 100) over a period of nearly a year, between November 26, 2010 and November 02, 2011.

Vidov and Milanova set up several shell companies, bearing the name of a cowherd working at a far near Vidin, which were awarded the abovementioned sum for "public works" such as the cleaning of illegal landfills or the local livestock market - ones that were never carried out.

No tender procedure was called for the works in question.

The scam was enacted while Vidin municipality, located in Bulgaria and the EU's poorest region, was piling up debts that were worth BGN 0.6 M as of 2010 and topped BGN 1.5 M over the course of a year. 

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