Bulgarian Politician’s Relative Is Refurbishing Buildings, His Parents Deal with Construction Control Mind the horns!

Picture: Delyan Dobrev receives the key of the first renovated building in the city of Haskovo. Source: Haskovo.net

The National Program for Energy Efficiency of Residential Buildings is a source of pride for the center-right party Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) and its leader Boyko Borisov always brags about it during his visits around the country. On May 15, 2016, he was in the town of Simeonovgrad (pictured), where he boasted that the outside walls of over 900 apartment buildings in Bulgaria are being retrofitted and the allocated resources amount to 2 billion levs.

“This is money that the government gives as a gift to each of the families who live in these dwellings, a gift of about 8,000 – 10,000 levs per family,” Borisov said then.

It turns out that other families also reap particular benefits from the energy efficiency program sponsored by the budget. The company “Viseur” Ltd., which belongs to the mother and father of Delyan Dobrev, former GERB lawmaker and Energy Minister, has won two contracts for construction supervision under the program for energy efficiency building refurbishment, a check by Bivol reveals. The contracts are worth 70,370 levs and come from the municipalities of the towns of Zlatograd and Svilengrad.

Mom and dad oversee whether relative is doing a fine construction job

One of the contracts for construction supervision is for a building that is being refurbished by the company of a relative of Delyan Dobrev. This is a “building with administrative address in Svilengrad, Izgrev district, apartment building 8” in the town of Svilengrad, for which the company “Eco Tradex Group” has a contract for refurbishment in the amount of 1,707,081 levs.

As Bivol already revealed in a previous investigation, the company “Eco Tradex Group” is owned by the husband of a cousin of Delyan Dobrev – Daniel Gargov and by Tencho Lilyanov. Both are former partners of Dobrev from the period before he became an MP and later minister. The said cousin, Rositsa Gargova, is Director of “Financial and Accounting Activities and Budget” in the Haskovo Municipality. Daniel Gargov a municipal councilor from GERB in the Haskovo City Hall and Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee.

The press office of GERB told Bivol they did not see a potential conflict of interest in this kinship.

Companies, owned by Gargov and Lilyanov, have won public contracts for over 100 million levs and, particularly in the energy efficiency program, “Eco Tradex Group” is in the top three of the companies that have received money from the budget, according to a research by the news site Mediapool.

And another associate is a Deputy Mayor in charge of construction…

Bivol also established that the Deputy Mayor of Haskovo in charge of Construction, Evgeni Konsulov, is also close to Delyan Dobrev. From 2006 to 2008, both were on the Board of the Association “Agency to Support the Development of Small and Medium Businesses” registered in the Haskovo District Court.