Prosecutors met Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s deadline of September 8 to charge former agriculture minister Valeri Tsvetanov with approving land swap deals at a loss to the state, allowing 15 companies and individuals to benefit.

One of Borissov’s promises when taking power on July 27 was to bring guilty people from the previous government to justice. Hence it was no surprise that charges were formally pressed on September 8, one day before Borissov paid his first official visit to the EU’s headquarters in Brussels.

Tsvetanov’s prosecution was hardly surprising because his name started appearing in alleged land swap schemes several months before the elections when the previous ruling majority decided to ban such deals. These transactions have long become synonymous with controversial and highly suspicious exchanges of state-owned land in attractive locations, mainly on the Black Sea, for land in remote locations elsewhere.

According to this scheme, if a company or individual seeks to acquire a plot of land, they can offer the state (in this case the Agriculture Ministry and the Forestry Agency) to exchange it for another plot of land provided that the state does not forfeit from such a deal and the public interest is not undermined. However, in most cases, the price of land offered to the state is several times lower than the one it is exchanged for, questioning the criteria on which the deal was deemed beneficial to the state. For example, land near the Black Sea suitable for construction is exchanged for agricultural land on the other side of the country. The previous administration banned such deals in the wake of public anger, an ordinance confirmed by Borissov’s government.

And it is exactly this ban that forms one of the pillars of the case against Tsvetanov, namely that he had approved 15 such deals on February 27 2009, two days before the ban came into force. According to the opposition at the time, mainly Borissov, this enabled people and companies to sidestep the ban and benefit.

Legal or moral
Legally, Tsvetanov’s actions are irreproachable because he signed the deals before such a ban came into effect. As for the moral side of the issue, the court has no powers.

Tsvetanov said he had no reason to worry about the charges as nothing he did contravened the law. Instead, prosecutors will have to prove that the state suffered financially from the exchanges. Another question arising is that of insubordination because certain deals involving state-owned land can only be approved by the Cabinet and not the minister. This will also have to be proven by prosecutors.

Tsvetanov was not the only former government official to face charges on September 8. Stefan Yuroukov, former head of the State Forestry Agency, faced similar charges for approving 20 swap deals with state-owned forests. This is his second charge in the past month-and-a-half. He is already under investigation for a deal with land near the Black Sea resort town of Sozopol which would also have to be proven in court.