State Fund Agriculture (SFA) executive director Dimitur Tadurukov was being investigated for SFA spending worth 22 million leva, mediapool.bg quoted anonymous sources from the prosecution on April 18 2008.

The money was spent by SFA under European Union's SAPARD rural aid pre-accession programme. According to mediapool.bg Tadurukov's investigation was part of the investigation against Assen Droumev, who is the former head of the state agency in charge of controlling payments under SAPARD programme and is SFA's predecessor.

On March 28 2008 Droumev was accused of malfeasances worth 48 million leva. The link between the two is the 48 million leva. After charges were pressed against Droumev, part of the 15 companies who received money decided to withdraw their SAPARD projects.

This was how Tadurukov was left with 22 million leva unspent under the SAPARD programme.

What prosecutors suspect was that Tadurukov redirected the money to toher projects without a tender procedure and without consulting the EC.

Tadurukov himself has said that redirecting funds within the frame of the programme was something normal and it did not violate the law.

Further more, the SFA said that there was nothing wrong in how SAPARD funds were being managed by both Droumev and Tadarukov.

On April 2 2008 Droumev told a news conference he had no idea why he was being investigated for the spending of 48 million leva.

Wrong or not, in early March 2008 the EC said it wanted payments worth 140 million euro of SAPARD funds frozen, relating to an investigation by the European Anti Fraud Office in 2006, which probed allegations that Bulgarian food producing companies bought second-hand equipment, but registered it as new.