Sofia city prosecution office would initiate an investigation on suspected corruption activities at Bulgaria’s Registry Agency, Prosecutor General Boris Velchev said on October 22, as quoted by mediapool.bg.

Violations had been detected during a sudden inspection at the agency made by Justice Ministry officials on October 20. The inspectors had told they found “especially disturbing” the conclusions drawn from the audit of the public orders the Registry Agency had granted.

In a letter to the prosecution, the Justice Ministry inspectorate said that an anti-corruption investigation should be started. The inspectors found that some serious violations had been committed by improper application of the Act on Public Orders during the procedure for selecting an IT company to develop the software of the new commercial register of Bulgarian companies.

On December 20 2006, the Registry Agency said it approved the tender offer of a consortium led by Siemens’s Bulgarian IT subsidiary, despite the fact that the consortium proposed the highest price for the implementation of the project. On the following day, a consortium of Bulgarian IT firms Ciela and Stemo, also a candidate but placed third in the tender, appealed against the procedure.

Now, the Justice Ministry inspectors found that the appeal was properly grounded and violations in the tender procedure existed indeed, mediapool.bg said. The prosecution authorities however, would have to check whether the violations were intentional, i.e. had a corruption element in them, or were accidentaly.