Vazrazhdane will appeal to the Appellate Prosecutor's Office in Sofia after the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office (SGP) refused to open a pre-trial investigation into a complaint by Petar Petrov. The complaint is about what Prime Minister Rumen Radev said on 29 May about manipulation of the state deficit. The deputy leader of the party's parliamentary group told journalists in the parliament lobby.

Petrov received the ruling this morning. It is dated 5 November, and the party does not agree with the prosecutors' conclusions.

"There is not one word about the 50-page report by the State Financial Inspection Agency (ADFI) on the Road Infrastructure Agency (API) from 10 September that I submitted, and not one word about the Eurostat report," he said.

On 29 May, Radev said that, by the European Commission's real calculations, last year's deficit was "well above 3%". He said some people had learned financial engineering at the state's expense, while others had carried out all kinds of manipulations. "This is the result of negligence, incompetence, wilfulness, populism and plunder," Radev said at the time.

Right after the statement, Petrov filed a complaint with the then acting prosecutor general. He asked prosecutors to check whether the 2025 budget was manipulated, whether Excel tables were rigged, and whether there were public contracts at heavily inflated prices, plunder and draining of the budget. The complaint was sent to the SGP. Petrov claims that since then the office has done "nothing at all".

At the end of October, he gave the SGP the ADFI report and a Eurostat report. The ADFI audit covers the Road Infrastructure Agency (API) for 2024 and 2025 and is linked to suspicions of a manipulated deficit.

Petrov says the ADFI report has specific evidence of delayed invoicing, a build-up of unpaid work and late payment of invoices at API. He says the certificates for completed work that were checked were held up and approved only when there was money in the budget. ADFI says that as of 30 March this year, half of the certificates from companies and contractors at the agency had still not been approved. Petrov says the Eurostat report strengthened suspicions that the deficit was manipulated through financial operations at API.

Petrov says the ruling by the supervising prosecutor contains general information from various sources and from the internet: what the eurozone is, what the Maastricht criteria are, and that Bulgaria has been a full member of the eurozone since 1 January. He believes the refusal shows the SGP's dismal unwillingness to check the prime minister's claims.

Petrov expects the Appellate Prosecutor's Office to decide differently: at the very least, to take a statement from the prime minister and to check thoroughly whether there were financial manipulations.