site.bta Socialist Dragomir Stoynev Reacts to GERB's Allegations about Belene Nuclear Plant Payments

Socialist Dragomir Stoynev Reacts to GERB's Allegations about Belene Nuclear Plant Payments

Sofia, October 25 (BTA) - Former economy, energy and tourism minister Dragomir Stoynev said on Tuesday that the failure of the Belene nuclear power plant project and all consequences of that failure should be blamed on the powerlessness of GERB as a ruling party. "They have failed in managing strategic energy projects and are leading Bulgaria towards energy dependence," Stoynev said in a statement circulated by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP).

The statement came a day after Energy Minister Temenouzhka Petkova said that it was under Stoynev (a BSP member), not under his predecessor Delyan Dobrev (GERB), that the former Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism failed to cancel payments to WorleyParsons for the Belene project after it was scrapped in 2012. The matter came into the public eye after Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov asked the National Assembly on Monday to strip Dobrev of immunity as an MP in order to be criminally prosecuted for causing the National Electricity Company to lose 4.6 million euro by failing to stop payments to Parsons E&C Europe Limited, a member of the WorleyParsons Group.

In his statement, Stoynev accused GERB of trying to evade responsibility by bringing up all sorts of documents. He said that he, too, can provide protocols of the Bulgarian Energy Holding from early 2013, when the Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism was still headed by Dobrev, and prove that payments were allowed at that time, albeit in a renegotiated form. "But the documents should be dealt with by the competent authorities. We should let them do their job," Stoynev argued.

He recalled that he took over as minister of economy, energy and tourism on May 29, 2013, and then in June of that year he fired the whole Board of Directors of the Bulgarian Energy Holding after realizing that the process of terminating the relationship with the Belene contractor had reached a dead end. It was then that payments were stopped, he added.

"I followed the rules and as a government minister I obeyed a decision of the Council of Ministers and the National Assembly which I had voted against as an MP of the BSP," Stoynev said, referring to the March 29, 2012 scrapping of the Belene project. He pointed out that he stopped the payment process for Belene and announced the fact at a news conference as the prosecution service took up the matter.

Stoynev further noted: "Belene has spawned a series of crises - the arbitration case that we lost, the administrative quagmire surrounding the termination of the project, which is now under investigation. How did we get to use lawyers from White and Case in the first place?".

According to Stoynev, the loss of public money due to the arbitration case and procedural mistakes is a fact, but what is more disturbing is that the country will continue to lose money "if this spineless government stays on after wrecking three strategic energy projects."