site.btaCC-DB Co-Chair: Andrey Tsekov Was Threatened for Mentioning Ivan Mirinski

Member of Parliament Andrey Tsekov from Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) received on Thursday a threat that if he keeps mentioning Ivan Mirinski, there will be problems. This is what the co-chairman of the political party Kiril Petkov told the media Friday on the sidelines of Parliament.

Petkov told journalists on April 9 that "people like Ivan Mirinski determine who wins public contracts even though they are not part of any state institution." Asked who Ivan Mirinski was, Petkov replied, "He is the former head of Vodstroy 98, which is a company linked, of course, to [MRF-NB leader Delyan] Peevski." 

Andrey Tsekov, who was Minister of Regional Development and Public Works in the Denkov cabinet, told the media how Delyan Peevski had tried to influence cabinet decisions through personal phone calls. 

Tsekov's story in an interview for bTV came in the context of the tragic events on the road Telish-Radomirtsi, in which 12-year-old Siyana died.

On Thursday, Tsekov and Petkov demanded the resignation of the head of the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) Yordan Valchev and pointed out that corruption is to blame for the state of Bulgaria’s roads, and public procurement in the sector is determined by the influence broker Ivan Mirinski - former CEO of "Vodstroy 98", mentioned for years as "Peevski's company".

According to Petkov, Mirinski was called the architect of the South Stream natgas pipeline, and on many occasions he would go to Moscow to negotiate. Mirinski made hundreds of millions under the second and third governments of GERB leader Boyko Borissov, Petkov said, adding that Mirinski was the decision maker in all public procurement contracts in the roads and water and sewerage sectors.

Petkov said that the threat came from a person he does not know the name of, and the meeting between him and Tsekov happened outside the National Assembly. "If you keep talking about Ivan Mirinski and shining light on him, you will have big problems," Tsekov was told, in Kiril Petkov’s words.

"He has been analysed by the EU prosecutor's office and the State Department for corruption signals, in other words he is the Petro Euro in the construction sector," Petkov added.