Several deals involving Sofia municipal companies that were patently unfavourable to the city hall were made public on July 10, Dnevnik daily reported on July 11.

The old managing board of the municipal parks company Parks, for instance, rented out 14 buildings in the Knyazhevo pine forest above Sofia. The monthly rent for the buildings, which have a combined floor area of 1380 sq m is 1200 leva.

The contract was signed the company's former manager Plamen Grozdanov in 2006 and it cannot be voided until 2010, according to Sofia municipal council chairperson Andrey Ivanov, as quoted by Dnevnik.

The contract is with youth cooperative Yalta, which has another dubious contract with the municipal firm. Yalta has received two garden nurseries in the villages of Malo Bouchino and Ivanyane near Sofia, with a combined area of 35ha. In exchange for covering all operational costs and a 150 leva monthly rent, Yalta can keep all the profits, including from selling the trees to the parks company at preferential prices, Dnevnik said.

Another municipality firm, which manages the markets in the northern part of the city, for its part, paid unreasonably hight prices to private companies to guard and clean market arees. Additionally, according to Ivanov, several contracts had been signed to

Inspections of the municipal company Pazari-Sever (Markets north) discovered another schemes for money draining, as the firm paid at ungrounded high prices to private companies to safeguard and clean the area. Ivanov explained that bedside this, several contracts have been signed for one and the same service.