Economic police in Burgas opened a pre-trial investigation today into mismanagement, after Sungurlare municipality paid in full for a care home for people with disabilities and reported it as finished when it is still being built. The Burgas regional police directorate (ODMVR) said the contract is worth €1,767,401.18 (3,456,376.43 leva) excluding VAT.
Officers visited the site in late October and found 21 workers still building.
The probe falls under Article 219 of the Criminal Code, which covers mismanagement. Police are looking at municipal staff whose signatures accepted the building work as done in the volumes and quantities set out in the technical specification. Early information suggests some of the work that was reported and paid for had not been done when the site was accepted.
Police seized all the documents for the contract. They are checking how the completed quantities were certified and on what grounds the municipality made the final payment.
The municipality awarded the contract in September 2025, and building began last autumn. At the end of July 2026 the site was signed off as finished on paper, and the municipality then paid the full contract sum. The builder is NERO 1 Ltd, according to public procurement records.
The building is part of the project "Building and equipping new social and integrated health and social services" in the municipality, paid for with money from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. It is meant to house two residential services for adults with dementia and a support centre for people with disabilities and their families.
Police did not say how much the work that may not have been done is worth. They also did not say which staff signed the papers accepting the site.
No one has been charged in the case so far. The check comes a week after a raid by the organised crime directorate (GDBOP) and the State Agency for National Security (DANS) in Sungurlare municipality, when mayor Dimitar Gavazov, an engineer, was detained. He and the mayor of Belitsa have been charged in an investigation into a criminal conspiracy to trade in influence in public procurement, and on 22 October Burgas District Court ordered them held in custody. There is no official information so far of a direct link between the new case and that investigation. Police are still checking the documents.
Updated (27.10, 15:21): Burgas regional police say the contract is worth 3,456,736.24 leva before VAT, not €3,456,376.43 (736.24 leva) as first reported.