site.btaProsecutor General Says Ulen Overused Bansko Skiing Concession Area, Recommends Changes to Concession Contract

Sofia, June 12 (BTA) - Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov has recommended to the government to change promptly the contract with concessionaire Ulen in Pirin nature park, including the concession fee. Making public this and other recommendations about the Ulen concession by the prosecution service to the government at a special news conference here Tuesday, Tsatsarov's spokesperson Roumyana Arnaoudova said that in the course of eight years Ulen has been using 65 ha more than the concession contract allowed them.

The prosecutorial probe was prompted by an alert by the Greens in February 2018, saying that Ulen is responsible for a number of violations of their concession agreement, including overuse of the concession territory.

"Many texts in the concession agreement are inadequate [to the law] and the method of calculating the concession royalties is non-compliant [with the law].

Prosecutors have looked at the period between 2014 and 2018 during which the Bulgarian Ski Federation received a subsidy of over 40 million leva. The practice was that the Federation applied for the subsidy to pay for training, after which a commission at the Sport Ministry considered the applications and made decisions. The Federation never reported the results from its subsidized activities and there are no documents about how the money was spent, said Arnaoudova.

This is why the prosecutors will check for possible mismanagement of budget funds.

The Greens alleged in their alert that the funding which the State provided to the Ski Federation run by Tseko Minev, who is widely believed to be connected to Ulen, was way more than the concession royalties which the State received from Ulen.

Arnaoudova said they have demanded documents concerning the ownership of Ulen to see if Tseko Minev is there.

An internal probe will look at how the Blagoevgrad prosecution office has worked on alerts for violations by Ulen, said also Arnaoudova. A statement by Tsatsarov's office earlier in the day said the Supreme Cassation Prosecution Office is still checking previous refusals by the prosecution service to launch pretrial proceedings on alerts about concession violations.