Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov’s decision to make public contracts signed by his predecessors caused an uproar in Bulgarian media, that got a rare chance to see what Bulgaria’s previous state officials had been up to when signing contracts and deals worth millions of leva.

Much of the attention was aimed at the first two contracts signed between the Finance Ministry and UK consultancy firm Crown Agents which has been working with the ministry, Customs Agency and the National Revenue Agency (NRA) for the past seven years.

Since 2001, the CA has signed four contracts with Bulgaria, the most recent signed in January 2009 under the previous government, by Dyankov’s predecessor Plamen Oresharski, with a timeframe of one-and-a-half years.

Dyankov declassified the first two contracts between the Finance Ministry and Crown Agents. Both contracts have run their course. The moment the two documents were made live on the ministry’s website, Bulgarian media were full of headlines such as "Contracts with Crown Agents full of humiliating clauses", "Half of the money paid went for Crown Agents’ salaries". Inevitably, there was a negative public reaction against Crown Agents and the money they were getting from the state.

When this negative reaction was mixed with the low public assessment of the work of customs and NRA, whose work Crown Agents was hired to improve by offering recommendations, the British company became an easy target.     

A bit of background
Crown Agents’ presence in Bulgaria has long been treated with misgivings by the media and, by extension, the public. The reason was simple. Right from the start, almost all details about what the company was hired to do were kept secret.

Part of the contracts were declared classified by then finance minister Milen Velchev, who signed the first contract in 2001, and by his successor Oresharski. This was why, despite Crown Agents having given a number of interviews over the years, some matters were "out of the question" simply because the contracts said so. This led to doubt and suspicion about what it was that Crown Agents was doing, other than improving the work of customs, and most importantly, what price Bulgarian taxpayers were paying for its services.

The latter became the focus of attention when Dyankov made public the first two contracts with the consultancy firm, signed in 2001 and 2004 by Velchev. The price of the first one was 10 830 006 pounds sterling and the second one 10 795 500 pounds. Under the first 36-month-long contract, for example, salaries varied from 16 683 pounds a month for CA’s top position in Bulgaria, to 7500 pounds a month for mobile team leaders.

The total share of remuneration under the first contract was 7 560 555 pounds, of the total cost of 10 830 006 pounds. Given the low level of average incomes in Bulgaria, these sums were the reason why most questions were about what Crown Agents has done over the past seven years to improve the work of customs.