EU: Bulgaria Ex-Energy Min ‘Indicted over Abeyance’

Former Bulgarian Economy and Energy Minister Traycho Traykov says he was indicted on charges of willful abeyance late last year.

In a Facebook post, Traykov argues he was handed the indictment on December 28, while the summons itself was handed to him several days earlier, on Christmas Eve.

It comes “as I was promised [to be indicted] before and during the presidential elections,” his post reads. Traykov ran in November’s presidential election.

He is accused of having allowed the sale of a state-owned minority stake (33%) of EVN Bulgaria Elektrorazpredelenie AD (a company managing the electricity distribution grid) at a considerably lower price than than normal, in 2011, at a time he was minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism.

Back in 2011, the government authorized the sale of its shares at EVN’s Bulgarian units (which included a stake at one more daughter company) for BGN 93 M. The deal was then presented by officials as a big success.

The deal was concluded on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange overseen and subsequently approved by a number of watchdogs, including the Privatization and Post-Privatization Control Agency (PPCA) and the Financial Supervision Commission, the ex-minister maintains. “The head of the PPCA is appointed by the [government] and is the same as in 2011, while the [official who was] then chair of the PPCA’s oversight board was recently promoted by [Parliament] to head of the Competition Protection Commission. Perhaps no-one cinsiders that the people who directly did and approved the conditions of the deal achieved a bad result.”

Full Content: Novinite

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