It has become something of a tradition for the Defence Ministry to be in the spotlight every time a new minister is appointed. No matter who the new incumbent is, both the media and society are bombarded with revelations about what his predecessors have done and how they deprived the state budget of millions of leva.

Nikolai Mladenov was no exception to this rule. For more than a week, he has been exposing deals conducted during the three previous ministers’ terms: Nikolai Svinarov, Vesselin Bliznakov and Nikolai Tsonev. All three hailed from the former ruling coalition partner, the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP), who ruled the Ministry in 2001-2009.

Until now, all media speculation about the Ministry’s suspicious deals concentrated on real estate, but Mladenov’s revelations showed a new trend surrounding the work of the ministry’s Social Activity Agency (SAA), a powerful body with seemingly high spending power.  

The NMSP reign
Over the past eight years media reports had centred on suspicious real estate deals by the Ministry. When the NMSP was part of the executive, however, prosecutors had little or no success charging, let alone successfully prosecuting,  Ministry officials. During this period NMSP leader Simeon Saxe-Coburg appointed three defence ministers, each of whom promised to bring everything to light.

The most recent example was Nikolai Tsonev. In May 2008, he replaced Vesselin Bliznakov as minister. Tsonev’s first news conference revealed astounding examples of Defence Ministry real estate deals that had cost the ministry millions of leva.

Promisingly, Tsonev’s first action as minister was to put on hold all deals involving ministry properties. He also ordered an investigation into all deals approved by the ministry over the previous eight years. "Unclear procedures for the selections of participants in real estate swap deals; lack of documentation; documentation with unclear and incorrect content; lack of criteria and reasoning why certain properties have been put up for a sale and others not" - these were just some examples Tsonev cited.

When asked for comment, Tsonev’s predecessor and fellow party member, Bliznakov, simply said that he had nothing to do with the cases mentioned by Tsonev because it was the regional governors, not the minister, who were legally empowered to approve such deals. Nevertheless, motivated to show the public that these violations would be investigated, Tsonev said he would send the findings to the Financial Supervision Commission and, if the relevant bodies took interest, he would not stand in their way.

On July 12 2009, a week before the new Government was about to be formed with Nikolai Mladenov as the new Defence Minister, a report came out containing more than 250 breaches of law by the Defence Ministry that had allegedly cost taxpayers eight million leva. This was a report that followed a probe into the activity of Defence Ministry’s SAA over two years, carried out by the Public Financial Inspection Agency. SAA is one of the crucial links in the Ministry’s system because it oversees all social activities of the Ministry’s staff and military personnel and governs a budget worth millions of leva.

The interesting detail here is that Tsonev used to be head of SAA under Svinarov’s reign as minister.  
The report’s scope covered the period 2006/08. Alleged irregularities range from repairs of military clubs and the activity of military cultural institutes to the construction of the large National Army Complex in Sofia. When the report came out, Tsonev said that it would be submitted to prosecutors for further investigation.

Waking up
On September 1, a month after the new Government took office, prosecutors suddenly decided to renew three of the cases against Tsonev from the time when he headed the Ministry’s Supply management department in 1999-2000. The investigations were shut down in 2001-2003, after the NMSP came to power with the conclusion that there was no evidence of crimes being committed. Tsonev was investigated for signing contracts that allegedly cost the budget more than one million leva. On September 1, prosecutors said that the three cases will be reopened.

Another case that prosecutors decided to reopen is that of Bozhourishte airfield near Sofia, Bulgarian-language news website Mediapool said.

The deal saw the swap of the airfield land for 106 apartments in 2007. The land went to Industrial Park Sofia, which intended to build a shopping centre. At the time of the swap, the airfield land was estimated at little more than 10 million leva while prosecutors’ checks showed that its real value was 47 million leva. The deal was started by Svinarov and
signed by Bliznakov, both of whom Mediapool said would be charged.