And after a court decision: a state company rejects information about 350 million. BGN cost – Bulgaria

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The director of the state company “Port Infrastructure” Angel Zaburtov started a “cat and mouse game” not to provide Dnevnik with the information requested under the Law on Access to Public Information. He was forced to do so by a decision of the Varna Administrative Court of September 25 this year. The requested data must show how the Russian company “Hydrostroy” received 350 million BGN from the state for the deepening of the navigable channels in the “Port of Varna” without tendering and awarding of a public procurement.

For the first time, Zaburtov refused to provide the requested information at the end of May this year. s

the reason why she represented Trade secret

In his refusal, he wrote that he was referring to a third party, the only state company “Reconstrucción de Transporte y Construcción”, for which he was asked for an opinion. From there, they disagreed with the provision of the requested information, considering that its disclosure “could be used by other companies to improve their future offers, which would harm the interests of” Reconstrucción de Transportes y Edificaciones.

After this refusal was appealed and after the September decision of the Varna Administrative Court, whereby Zaburtov was forced to provide full data on with whom and at what price the contracts for the dredging works on Lake Varna were concluded , sent “Dnevnik”

a second completely different version of silence on the questions raised

According to her, the state company, which she manages, did not have the requested information on with whom the contracts for “Transportation and Reconstruction of Construction” were signed. In his answers, however, he ignored the question of the price paid to Hydrostroy entirely.

At the end of April of this year, the cabinet authorized the start of the deepening works of the two navigable channels, 1 and 2, along which ships arrive from the sea to Lake Varna and the port of Varna – West . Shortly after, the cabinet authorized four ships owned by the Russian company Hydrostroy to operate in the country’s inland waters. 350 million BGN was allocated from the national budget for this activity.

The financing went through the state-owned Port Infrastructure Company, which delivered it to the 100% state-owned Transport and Construction Rehabilitation Company without public bidding through the Ministry of Transportation. For his part also

without tendering and public procurement hires the Russian “Hydrostroy”

Already on May 7 of this year, Dnevnik requested a request under the Law on Access to Public Information to the state company “Port Infrastructure”, which was to contain a copy of the text of an agreement concluded between it and the commercial company state “Transport Construction and restoration”, for the deepening of the navigable canals in the port of Varna. With the same request, a reference was requested on how again, without a tender, Transport Construction and Reconstruction, whose owner is the Ministry of Transport, selected Hydrostroy, registered in the Kaliningrad enclave, to enter into a dredging contract with it.

However, the partial responses to the questions provided to Dnevnik by Port Infrastructure after the court ruling resulted in

more questions

“According to the agreement signed between the parties (” Port Infrastructure “and” Reconstruction of Transport and Construction “, ed. Note), the contractor must prepare and present an Investment Project in the Detailed Design phase. No Project has been prepared Technician for the site, “the information reads. , signed by Angel Zaburtov. Therefore, the question remains how, in the absence of a technical project, the government has determined the price of BGN 350 million and how much of it Hydrostroy has received.

Among the reasons for refusing to provide the information requested by Infraestructura Portuaria are:

there was no way to justify it the overriding public interest

to the topic.

In administrative and legal jargon, this means that the public has no interest in knowing how and why money from the national budget was delivered without tender to a foreign company through two state-owned companies.

Another question, no less important, remains unanswered: whose problems will be solved by deepening the two navigable canals, which give boats access to the ports of Varna and the lakes of Beloslav?

“We will make sure that Bulgaria’s gate at sea, Varna, is open to the heaviest ships, which are currently unable to enter,” Rosen Zhelyazkov said some time ago in an interview with BTV. The aim of the project is to go down to 13 meters. “According to him, in this way maritime transport through the port of Varna would become cheaper and he himself would become more attractive in

competition with Constanta

The waterway through lakes Varna and Beloslav serves several of Devnya’s big factories: “Agropolychim”, “Solvay Sodi” and “Devnya Cement”, as well as the ferries whose terminal is in Beloslav. The distance from Varna Bay to there is about 25 km, and the street passes under the Asparuhov Bridge and two canals, which are periodically blocked.

The problem of the need to go deeper through them has been put on the agenda many times by the owners of Agropolychim, who want to provide access to the port of Varna, west of 50-60 thousand tons of ships, and not only up to 30 thousand tons. ., as at present. The data provided by Port Infrastructure sounds even more optimistic.

“The objective of the project is to allow larger ships, up to 60-70 thousand tons, to enter the waters of the port terminals after navigable channels 1 and 2,” they said.

However, the government decided to reserve funds for this activity only when the honorary chairman of the MRF, Ahmed Dogan, began to implement his project for a new port in the Varna TPP. It is located at the bottom of Lake Varna and right at the entrance to the other artificially dug navigable canal, which connects it with Beloslav.

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