Novera, the hoding company whose subsidiaries held a concession to collect domestic waste in Sofia until the start of March, threatened to file yet another lawsuit against the city hall, Dnevnik daily reported on March 24.

Novera claims that it is owed 6.4 million leva for cleaning activities carried out in February, which the city hall had to pay by March 21.

Despite reminders, the municipality was yet to pay the money. "By refusing to pay, the city hall is reinforcing the trend from recent months to intentionally delay payments," Dnevnik quoted a Novera statement as saying.

The delay prompted Novera to halt operations in 19 of the 24 Sofia boroughs for which it had a refuse collection concession, which gave Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov a pretext to cancel those contracts, Dnevnik said. Borissov has long been at odds with Novera, trying to cancel break the company's monopoly on refuse collection in the city, which prompted several refuse crises over the past years.

The payment deadline was March 27 and the city hall would honour its contractual obligations, the daily quoted Sofia deputy mayor for finance Minko Gerdjikov as saying. According to Gerdjikov, the city hall owed Novera only 5.4 million leva, because it had already made some advance payments for March cleaning.

Novera is already suing the city hall for 50 million leva, claiming it lost that amount because the city hall did not increase the refuse collection fees when it had to. It also plans to appeal Borissov's decision to cancel the concession contracts.