The money that the company “A and D Kazakovi” will receive will be allocated under the Operational Program “Innovation and Competitiveness”
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The company “A and D Kazakovi”, owned by the Chairman of the Dryanovo Municipal Council Georgi Kazakov (GERB) and his sister, will receive just over BGN 300,000 European funding under the Innovation and Competitiveness Operational Program. This is shown by an investigation of “Pro Veritas”. The money is part of a total of BGN 7.3 million, with which Dryanovo and Tryavna will have to implement the strategy developed by the Local Action Group “Dryanovo – Tryavna – in the heart of the Balkans” for the development of businesses, culture and the civil sector in the area. The curious thing in this case is that the leader of the team that have determined the winning projects is Dryanovo’s Mayor Miroslav Semov.
The money that “A and D Kazakovi” will receive will be allocated under the Operational Program “Innovation and Competitiveness”. The approved project is worth BGN 347 thousand. This amount includes BGN 265 thousand from the European Regional Development Fund, nearly BGN 47 thousand – national financing and BGN 35 thousand own contribution of the beneficiary company.
With this money, the company owned by the Chairman of the Municipal Council in Dryanovo and his sister, will purchase a modern biscuit production line at their pastry workshop. Thus, the company should be given the opportunity to increase the quality of its production and to enter new markets at home and abroad. This is recorded in the rationale for the project, which can be found in the European Union Monitoring System ISMM 2020.
According to the information published there, “A and D Kazakovi” intends to “acquire and commission a new, energy efficient, high-performance automatic dosing and packaging line” and “thus the project implementation will directly contribute to high resource efficiency by the company, for the high competitiveness of the company and its sustainable upward development”.
Circumstances and honesty
There is nothing unusual and wrong with the ambition of a candy producing company to acquire a new, modern technique. Unless there are circumstances that cast doubt on the way in which good intent must be exercised.
Local Action Groups are associations or foundations that carry out activities in social benefit within the meaning of the Law on Non-Profit Legal Entities. These groups act as ‘paying agencies’ on site. Their founders are representatives of local businesses, cultural institutes, non-governmental organizations, municipalities and mayoralties. They establish a team (collective managing authority, editor’s note) that has the final word on which, of the submitted projects, will be proposed for funding and which will be rejected.
Eligible projects are of farmers, craftsmen, hoteliers, community centers, municipalities and small businesses. The purpose is that ideas that are important for the development of the respective municipalities shall be funded. And thus – to give a chance to local entrepreneurs to develop activities that will revitalize small towns and create new jobs. When evaluating the projects, the opinion of an independent evaluator must be obtained.
The approval of project financing is not obtained from the Managing Authority of the respective Operational Program, but from committees established on site. Thus, the suspicions that winners are determined on the basis of dependencies and commitment, especially in small municipalities like Dryanovo, are well-founded.
A reference in the Trade Register shows that the Mayor of Dryanovo Miroslav Semov is representing the Local Action Group “Dryanovo-Tryavna – in the heart of the Balkans”. The organization’s website features the name “chairman of the collective governing body” against his name.
According to the Law on Local Government and Local Administration, the mayor of the municipality represents the executive power and the body of local self-government is the municipal council. The division is in the control functions that the municipal council exercises over the activity of the administration.
In this particular case, the Chairman of Dryanovo Municipal Council Georgi Kazakov is empowered to control how the team led by Mayor Miroslav Semov works. But after receiving financing for the activity of his private company with the decision of an authority headed by Semov himself, the serious doubts about his future objectivity are given serious grounds.
The Law for Anti-Corruption and Confiscation of Illegally Acquired Property (LACCIAP) defines such dependence as a conflict of interest. Such a conflict is present when the private is given priority over the public interest. Thus, the competent authorities will probably have to decide on the case with the funding allocated to the Chairman of Dryanovo Municipal Council.
When you ask a lot
Georgi Kazakov has been chairman of the Dryanovo Municipal Council since April 2018, when the powers of his predecessor Todor Georgiev were cancelled (both of them members of GERB, editor’s note) following the request of five of his colleagues and party members.
“Georgiev was out of favor because he started asking a lot of awkward questions about the transparency of Mayor Semov’s policy,” says Rumyana Stancheva, a Dryanovo citizen. The explanation of Georgiev himself about the situation was in his increased activity regarding the work of the municipal administration, and especially in the control over the expenditure of public finances. In his opinion, Mayor Semov did not like it. There are rumors in the town that it is Semov that stands behind the removal of trust from Georgiev and his replacement with Kazakov.
Doubts or facts
The suspicions that the group includes only associations and businessmen close to the Mayor of Dryanovo Miroslav Semov have yet emerged when the Local Action Group “Dryanovo – Tryavna – in the heart of the Balkans” was formed.
Attendees of its inaugural meeting claim that Semov has single-handedly organized the presence of companies and associations in order to guarantee support in the management of the future action group, which will allocate a solid financial resource – BGN 7.3 million. For comparison – the annual budgets of Dryanovo and Tryavna have not exceeded BGN 8 million in the last few years.
Miroslav Semov denied having been interested as the leader of the local action group that approved the “A and D Kazakovi” project for funding under the Innovation and Competitiveness program. He explained that the legality in setting up the initiative group was monitored by a legal expert specially hired for that purpose. There were even doubts about the falsified minutes of the constituent assembly of the group, but the prosecutor’s office found no evidence of a crime and refused to initiate pre-trial proceedings.
“For me there is no conflict”
“If my GERB colleagues find a conflict in the situation and ask for my resignation as a Chairman of the Municipal Council, I am ready to submit it,” Georgi Kazakov told “Pro Veritas”. “For me, there is no collision of interests, nor do I see an opportunity to depend on my job as Chairman of the Municipal Council,” he said.
According to him, the final assessment, which project to receive funding under the operational program, is not carried out by the Municipality of Dryanovo, but by the Ministry of Economy.
“In addition, the funds that small and medium-sized enterprises in Dryanovo will receive, one of which is mine, will enter the economy of Dryanovo and Tryavna, which would affect the social status of their residents,” Kazakov said. “The confectionery business is my main business. It’s normal to look for ways to develop it. I do not find conflict or dependence, on the contrary – I expect more companies to be interested in the opportunities offered by the local action groups,” said Georgi Kazakov.
