site.btaProsecution Magistracy to Question Interior Minister Rashkov as Witness in Hemus Motorway Investigation

December 29 (BTA) - The Prosecution Magistracy will call Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov as a witness in the investigation over the construction of Hemus motorway, Sofia City Prosecution Office Spokesperson Desislava Petrova said here on Wednesday.

A 42-year-old man, Borislav Kolev, is the only suspect charged with money-laundering in the high-profile money-laundering scheme using the construction of the Hemus Motorway. He was arrested earlier in December for organizing the scheme, in which close to 54 million leva paid by the last GERB government for construction of Hemus vanished in an intricate scheme of straw companies. That happened through an in-house contracting procedure at the state-owned road construction company Avtomagistrali, which was able to pick without a competition the contractors in the motorway project. From the Avtomagistrali contractors, the money reached the straw companies and was withdrawn from the bank in bags and sacks, according to witnesses. The straw companies had low-income and uneducated people as nominal owners. Now, the 54 million leva is missing and the motorway is still not built.

It transpired that Kolev had sought to provide to the investigators information that would possibly lead to people higher up in the money laundering scheme - in exchange for milder charges. That caused recriminations between the Interior Ministry and the prosecuting service of sabotaging the case.

The Prosecution Magistracy will question Rashkov following an interview of his in which he said he knows where the missing money went. "The scheme is mafia-made so that everyone in it knows a bit, but not everything. It is no secret for me where this money went", he told Bulgarian National Radio on December 23.

Following this case, the Prosecution Magistracy is also checking an investigation over tax fraud. The Interior Ministry has not yet provided any data on the missing money, the Prosecution Magistracy said, voicing hope to use Rashkov's testimony as evidence on the case.

Petrova stressed that Kolev has refused to provide information to the Interior Ministry on several occasions and during his interrogation, attended by two supervising prosecutors, he expressed doubts about the work of the General Directorate Combating Organized Crime. It was not until his interrogation on December 21, that the defendant testified, providing the names of individuals, companies and places, supposedly related the suspected crime. Kolev asked the pre-trial against him to be closed, as he pleaded innocent, Petrova also said.