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In the first part of Vasil Ivanov’s investigation, you saw how the Vazrazhdane party spent its subsidy of BGN 1.6 million, although its main electoral promise was that it would abandon it. Party leader Kostadin Kostadinov apologized for being forced to take it because the law required it. NOVA’s investigation found that this was not the case.
NEW INVESTIGATION: How do opponents of party subsidies spend state money?
The promise to forgo a party subsidy was widely publicized by Kostadinov throughout the campaign. Thus, the Vazrazhdane party received more than 1% of the votes in the 2017 parliamentary elections. And with it, the right to a party subsidy of BGN 1.6 million for a period of 4 years. A few days later, Vazrazhdan President Kostadin Kostadinov announced that his party would not give up the subsidy for legal reasons: the law did not allow him to surrender. Kostadin Kostadinov also explained to our team that he had asked the National Audit Office and the Ministry of Finance in writing and they replied in a letter that he had no right to give up the party subsidy. Kostadinov spoke to the media about this letter, but never showed it. Therefore, under the law on access to public information, the NOVA team obtained Kostadinov’s letter, simultaneously addressed to the National Audit Office and the Ministry of Finance, as well as their written responses.
“Minister of Service, Mr. President, would it be legal for a possible official rejection of the Vazrazhdane political party to receive the subsidy and not transfer it to the party at all?” If this is possible, what is the procedure to follow for the previous action, so that it is expressed in a valid way and produces the desired consequences?
And here is the response from the Ministry of Finance:
Dear Mr. Kostadinov, in view of the position expressed in the letter, the Vazrazhdane political party may, at its discretion, not exercise the subjective right granted to it by the Political Parties Law through one of the following options:
A / Do not submit an application to the Ministry of Finance for a subsidy. In the event that certain documents of the political party “Vazrazhdane” are not submitted to the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Finance may not distribute or transfer a state subsidy to the account of this party.
B / To present an explicit refusal to receive the state subsidy due. A statement rejecting a subsidy can only be made by the person representing the political party, as a result of which the corresponding subsidy will continue to be a saving in the state budget.
Clear and precise. Kostadin Kostadinov’s Vazrazhdane party may withdraw the subsidy. In this letter you also receive precise explanations of how to do it if you wish. Instead of following these recommendations to forgo the subsidy, as he promised his voters, Kostadin Kostadinov personally signed and submitted the following request to the Ministry of Finance.
“Statement by the Vazrazhdane political party, through Kostadin Todorov Kostadinov – president and representative.” The Vazrazhdane political party officially declares its desire to receive a state subsidy, which must be transferred to the attached bank account. “
As soon as he publicly explained that for legal reasons he could not give up the grant, Kostadin Kostadinov, again through the media, declared that he would donate the entire grant to charity. We check whether you did it through the reports that the law requires you to submit to the Court of Accounts. In three years, to date, his party received BGN 1 million from the state. And of them made donations of 250,000, that’s a quarter. There are 60,000 left in the party account, which means that the leadership has spent 700,000 levs on something else. Something else happened after the elections. From his panel department in the workers’ residential complex “Apricot Garden”, party leader Kostadin Kostadinov moved into a house, which he bought for BGN 200,000. It is located near the coast and with a magnificent view. And in front of her she is already parking a car for 40,000 leva, which she bought in the store.
“They saved me 15,000 BGN, I took 199,000 BGN and bought my house,” Kostadinov told the NOVA team. He continued to insist that he could not give up the party subsidy.
A day after the transmission of the first part of the investigation, the National Audit Office extended its position, in which it reacted sharply to the words of Kostadin Kostadinov, spoken in front of our team. Due to the fact that the lawyers of the National Audit Office had told him that he had no right to renounce the subsidy.
“Mr. Kostadin Kostadinov’s statement that lawyers from the National Audit Office have told him that he is obligated to receive the state subsidy due for Vazrazhdane National Park is not true. He has never met with lawyers in the Court of Auditors and have never expressed such an opinion. What it says is false, “said Tsvetan Tsvetkov, president of the National Audit Office.
The Court of Auditors: We have not ruled that there is no possibility of giving up a state subsidy
One day after the transmission of the first part of the investigation, we received more interesting information from a colleague from Kostadinov. A month before the leader of “Vazrazhdane” got a house, his wife Velina bought an apartment for 100,000 in the Mladost district of Varna. Since the apartment account in the Land Registry does not contain a mortgage or pledge, this means that the apartment was purchased with cash – cash. And Kostadinov’s wife receives a net monthly salary of only BGN 700, as curator of the museum in Varna.
After the broadcast of our investigation last Sunday, Kostadin Kostadinov made a statement in which he stated that our team was manipulating and never promised to give up the party subsidy, but promised from the beginning that after receiving it, he would donate it. Although in the archival records of before the elections we hear something else: how they will renounce the subsidy and not take it. This is even confirmed by the letter sent by Kostadinov to the National Audit Office and the Ministry of Finance, in which he writes that he rejects the subsidy and asks if there is a legal possibility that it will not be transferred to his party.
Kostadin Kostadinov accused our team of manipulation and saw an order on him. An order from the government and the parties to the status quo, which included all parliamentary parties. And now this criminal status quo feared him: the new face and morals in politics. However, our team was buried in Kostadinov’s past and this is what the status quo parties discovered about him.
In 2005 Stefan Sofiyanski was the leader of the list, and Kostadin Kostadinov was second on the list. After that, Kostadinov was IMRO Vice President, First Deputy Minister of War and Deputy Prime Minister Krassimir Karakachanov for 3 years. Kostadinov is also a candidate for mayor of Varna in the right-wing political project “Varna Tomorrow” by Krasen Kralev, who is currently Minister of Youth and Sports. Then he was the leader of the NFSB list. Next – “Attack” candidate for Mayor of Varna. In the last elections, again a candidate for mayor of Varna, with the support of BSP-Varna, whose leader is Borislav Gutsanov. A year and a half ago, together with the BSP, they organized a protest in the center of Sofia. Along with Cornelia Ninova, who, in her own words, is also part of the status quo.
Kostadin Kostadinov stayed at the IMRO for longer. From 2006 to 2012 he was employed by the IMRO Foundation. He was first held there for 3 years as “Organizer”, and then for 2 years as “Business Expert”. He was brought into these positions to receive a salary as a party activist, as he actually is all the time, including: 3 years as party vice president.
“Obviously that was the free state that should be designated. But he was involved in party activities, he was a party official, a full-time and paid party official,” explained Krassimir Karakachanov.
After running for IMRO president in 2012 and not being elected, Kostadinov left and decided to run for another management position: director of the museum in Dobrich. However, this position requires 5 years of work experience in the field of culture. And this is a problem for Kostadinov, because all his official work experience up to that point was in IMRO. And that is why it presents documents, and among them must be those that certify that it has 5 years of experience in the field of culture. And strangely, the commission elects him director. This raised our doubts and, under the Law on Access to Public Information, we asked the Municipality of Dobrich for copies of the documents that Kostadinov submitted to the commission. And what turned out. In his application, he indicated as common the two positions he held at IMRO. The positions of “Organizer” and “Business Expert”. Why? Because in your job description, which you showed us for the “Organizer” position, while working for the first 3 years, it is written that your activity in this position includes cultural activity. Namely, the production of books, films and scientific expeditions. And in his other job description for the “business expert” position, where he worked for the next two years, no activity in the field of culture was recorded. That is, with the two positions in which he worked one after the other, he gained a total of 5 years of experience, but only for the first: “Organizer” has experience in the field of culture and is 3 years old. The other 2 as “business expert” don’t work for him. Perhaps that is why Kostadin Kostadinov wrote them as a general position, where he worked for 5 years. In the request submitted by him for the period 2006-2012 in the column “name of the positions occupied”, he wrote “Business expert, organizer” and in this sense he listed the functions of both positions. That is, economic activity: operation and control, production of books, films and scientific expeditions. He did not record the two positions in separate periods, as it should be, and they are in one paragraph. Therefore, the commission is deluded because Kostadinov has the necessary five-year experience in the field of culture for the position of director, and not just 3, in fact.
Kostadinov also tried to trick our team that these two positions are the same.
“We posted job descriptions for Kostadin Kostadinov on November 9, 2012. He would then apply to be a museum director and to participate in the competition, job descriptions are required,” explained Julian Angelov of IMRO.
Kostadin Kostadinov tries to present to our team the two different positions in which he worked at IMRO, for a common position.
See more in the video
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