Sofia prosecutors filed the bill of indictment against Vesselin Georgiev, the former head of the National Road Infrastructure Fund (NRIF), on January 15 2009, almost a year he was accused of in corruption in an investigation by Bulgarian-language weekly Kapital.

In January 2008, the weekly reported that Georgiev was involved in a serious conflict of interest. His younger brother, Emil Georgiev, and the company he ran, Binder, had been assigned work worth 120 million leva of EU funds by the NRIF. Furthermore, Vesselin Georgiev himself was a former director at Binder.

Prosecutors concluded that Georgiev has personally approved 10 contracts between the NRIF and Binder and two other companies, run by his other brother Boiko Georgiev, which was a violation of the Public Tenders Act, Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily said.

Witnesses told prosecutors that Georgiev had personally signed these contracts, which, according to indictment "has caused serious damages to Bulgaria". One such thing was the freezing of hundreds of million of euro in EU funding to Bulgaria by the European Commission over doubts of corruption.

When the scandal broke last year, instead of taking action, the finance and regional development ministers refused to act for weeks even though it was perfectly clear that a relative of Georgiev was the main beneficiary of the NRIF.

Georgiev himself arguing that there was no conflict of interests in the situation, because his brothers did not own the companies thatreceived contracts from NRIF, but were only executives in the companies.

It was not until the EC took notice of the scandal, that Georgiev resigned, but never admitted any guilt. And it was not until October that prosecutors decided to charge him with breaching the Public Tenders Act.

In the meantime, the Cabinet decided to transform the NRIF, which is now the National Road Infrastructure Agency and subordinated directly to the Prime Minister, rather than the Regional Development Minister.