Bulgaria's national railway company NRIC has cancelled tenders worth more than €350m and contracts worth more than €20m after an audit raised suspicions of abuse. Transport minister Georgi Peev said this in a TV interview.
Checks at NRIC and the state rail operator BDZ led to 17 files at the European Public Prosecutor's Office. Peev said one of them involves suspected siphoning of EU funds, abuse, transfers to shell companies and cash withdrawals. The audit results have been reported to national and European authorities.
Peev said why NRIC stopped the tenders. Some have no secured funding. In others, the criteria leave only one possible bidder. In some, the estimated value, meaning the sum the company expects to pay, was not set as a ceiling, and every bid came in above it. Other tenders were stopped on other grounds.
At BDZ, the audit found abuse in changes to contracts and in the purchase of rolling stock, meaning trains and carriages. The cases have been passed to the EU anti-fraud office, OLAF.
On Corridor VIII, Peev called relations with North Macedonia good, practical and working. He said the government has sped up the project together with the Macedonian side. He is confident the project will get EU funding and that work will go on at a faster pace.
Peev also spoke about the ships hit by drones and sunk in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea. Some of the sailors are missing, and a large-scale rescue operation was held to find them. The government will check and analyse what happened and then publish the results, he said.
He said people should speak with facts and evidence, and that any theory is possible, including that the drones were made by a third country. The European Council has meanwhile concluded that Russia is to blame for the drone strikes on ships in the exclusive economic zones of Bulgaria and Romania.
Peev asked the families of the missing sailors to think realistically, saying everything possible was done to find them, and to trust the professionals. He believes the ships sank so fast that no equipment could have changed anything, however many search and rescue assets Bulgaria had at sea.
Peev does not expect provocations in Bulgaria's territorial waters. He hopes the conflict will calm down and that Russia and Ukraine will soon sit down for peace talks. For the Black Sea, he thinks a ceasefire and talks would help.
Bulgaria will get a specialised search and rescue ship in 2029. After that, it will apply for EU money for more such ships.