This Must Be Seen: A Frightening Example of Utter Futility and Wasted State Funds. In the middle of nowhere, amidst endless cornfields near the Shumen village of Tsarev Brod, nearly a million leva (possibly much more, ed.) are buried. Here lies a small rural reservoir, which is more akin to a pond in size, and essentially serves as a local duck pond— a favorite spot for the resident birds.
The water reservoir, accessible via dirt roads, is kilometers away from people and houses, has never posed a threat to anyone, and has never been used for anything other than fishing by local businessmen who leased it in recent years. The small reservoir doesn’t even serve for irrigation, leaving the locals wondering what the original purpose of its creators was when they built the dam and captured the flowing waters about 50 years ago.
After half a century of quietly existing as a duck pond and fishing spot, last year the rural water body suddenly “awoke” as a strategic site.
The reservoir, officially named “Tsarev Brod 2,” ended up on the infamous list of the State Consolidation Company (DCC), which in 2018 the government of Boyko Borisov allocated 500 million BGN from the state budget to reinforce 416 emergency reservoirs.
Three years later,
the caretaker Minister of Economy Kiril Petkov was surprised to discover that despite the substantial funds allocated, only 10 out of all 416 reservoirs on the DCC list had been completed. To make matters worse, it turned out that even these 10 reservoirs were illegal. “I hoped there would be no dam wall without a permit, but it turned out that none of the 10 constructed walls have a building permit. We only see handwritten orders,” Minister Petkov stated at a briefing in early September 2021. He also presented facts about the drastically inflated repair costs—transport prices had increased fivefold, and the price of concrete had doubled, noted Kiril Petkov.
Among the “golden” reservoirs of the DCC, the rural reservoir in Tsarev Brod somehow made its way onto the list of important sites, though it remains unclear by what criteria. To this day, no one in Shumen can or wants to explain how this pond ended up on the list of significant projects. “There are regional committees that inspect the reservoirs every year along with representatives from the Basin Directorate and the municipalities. I was always invited to the inspections before, but for the past ten years, no one has contacted me, and I don’t know if they have ‘submitted’ the reservoir to the DCC,” says the mayor of Tsarev Brod, Stefan Zhivkov.
He learned about the repairs on the local pond when heavy machinery started passing through the village streets: “It was last spring. I received phone calls from some guys saying, ‘Good day, we are from Vratsa, and we will be repairing the reservoir.’ I asked, ‘What repairs? The reservoir is not state-owned yet.'” Until 2019, this and other rural reservoirs were municipal properties, but in 2020, the municipality of Shumen quickly relinquished ownership of many water bodies and transferred them to the state. Immediately after, some of them were included in the DCC list for repairs.
“However, there was still no transfer protocol by which the reservoir was handed over to the state. I called the municipality of Shumen and told them: ‘They are starting repairs here; don’t be surprised with an invoice for 800,000 BGN!’ Because I heard from the workers that the repair would cost 800,000 BGN. Representatives from the municipality immediately came, spoke with the company, and then they began to drain the reservoir and prepare it for repairs,” the mayor of Tsarev Brod describes how the municipality and the government started the repairs in haste and urgently cleared the way for the “golden pond.”
Stefan Zhivkov, who has held this position for seven terms and is rarely surprised by the whims of higher authorities, is certainly puzzled this time. “Why did they carry out this repair? The little reservoir was just a regular fishery; it’s not dangerous—the path of the water has no populated areas, and there isn’t enough volume to cause flooding. It holds about 44,000 cubic meters of water, which isn’t much at all. Yet they poured a ton of concrete in the middle of nowhere to strengthen it, dug, drilled, and stuffed rebar of F16 as if they were building a bomb shelter. They put up nets and even markers for potential settlement of the wall. But this is of no use to anyone,” wonders the mayor of Tsarev Brod.
To this day, he does not know which company is the contractor or
how much money is buried in the rural duck pond,
despite having written to all institutions. The only thing that has become clear is the name of the company responsible for construction supervision and investor control: “Artoстрой-Nikolov, Sons and Company,” officials from the DCC responded to Zhivkov’s inquiries. The mayor began following the trail of the repairs when, shortly after the appointment of the caretaker government in May 2021, the builders suddenly started packing up their equipment and preparing to leave. “They still had a lot of finishing work to do. In the northern part of the reservoir, there were root systems and logs, and the bottom was littered with unremoved soil, construction debris, and even old tires. They stayed there as they were. After the caretaker government was appointed, the builders hurriedly packed their belongings and began filling the reservoir,” explains the mayor of Tsarev Brod.
The unfinished repairs and the reservoir filled with soil and debris sparked public outrage, leading to the emergence of images of the “golden pond” on social media. Stefan Zhivkov began sending alerts that the reservoir had been abandoned by the builders without completing the repairs. The caretaker district governor of Shumen, Valentin Alexandrov, also intervened, raising the issue before the state enterprise responsible for managing reservoirs. Initially, they announced that the reservoir would be drained again to clean the bottom, but everything remained in the realm of promises. “Immediately after my alert, the manager of the Varna subdivision arrived and promised that he would not accept the reservoir as it was. He said he had ordered it to be drained to clean the bottom. This was in June. But to this day, nothing has been done,” says the mayor of Tsarev Brod.
He summarizes the results of the repairs: “Now the reservoir is a true pond, but a golden one. Instead of cleaning the reservoir, they covered it with dirt and stones, reducing its useful capacity. After the repairs, there were huge piles of soil here, supposedly to be removed, but in a rush, once news of inspections came around, they apparently shoved all the soil back into the reservoir, and now the water at the overflow is knee-deep. It used to be 2 meters deep,” the mayor of Tsarev Brod expresses his frustration. When asked what the “golden pond” could be used for, he waves his hand dismissively: “For nothing, for fish farming.”
Meanwhile, just four months after the repairs, locals reported that the concrete in the channels has begun to crack. “This concrete was poured directly onto the soil, and with the first rain, it will start to settle,” the residents of the village comment.
As for how much exactly the “golden pond” has cost the state and taxpayers, this remains an unanswered question. Even the district governor of Shumen, Valentin Alexandrov, could not provide an answer. “The state enterprise for reservoirs told me to seek information from the DCC, and they haven’t responded to me,” says Alexandrov when we inquired about the price of the small reservoir near Tsarev Brod.
For nearly a month, the Ministry of Economy has also been withholding such information. Despite multiple verbal and written inquiries to the Ministry’s press office, no answers have been received to this point.
The scandal surrounding the reservoirs erupted when, in early June, caretaker Minister of Economy Kiril Petkov conducted an inspection of the “Pazar Dere” reservoir near Lovech and found that the state had spent over 2.3 million BGN to repair what he described as a “puddle.” It turned out that the DCC had awarded the repairs to the state company “Montazhi,” which then subcontracted the work to private firms without a tender.
Meanwhile, in August, following parliamentary oversight, the chair of the parliamentary group of “IBGNI,” Maya Manolova, announced that over 600 million BGN had been funneled through the state firm “Montazhi” to companies linked to the GERB government. In addition to the 500 million BGN provided by the state for emergency reservoir repairs, the Bulgarian Development Bank also granted a loan of 130 million BGN to the DCC. “Out of the total 630 million BGN secured, repairs worth 104 million BGN were completed. However, the funds were transferred in advance. The last repairs were awarded a week before the April 4 elections,” Manolova stated to the media, calling for a hearing with caretaker Minister Kiril Petkov on the matter.
From Petkov’s response, it became clear that there are 6 to 7 companies for which no public procurements or bids were conducted, and the prices that the DCC paid to “Montazhi” were several times higher than the market rates. “Approximately 200 million BGN of taxpayer money have been overpaid for these activities,” commented Minister Petkov.
He reported that so far, 10 reservoirs have been completed. Another 18 have finished repairs, but their documentation is still being finalized—among them is the one in Tsarev Brod.
In total, there are 33 reservoirs in the country that need urgent repairs, but none of the 10 completed ones are included in that list, pointed out the caretaker minister.
In September, he announced plans to dismiss the last member of the board from the DCC who was part of these decisions. “In addition to the dismissals, we will seek accountability from the management of the DCC, because this is unacceptable,” the economic minister stressed, indicating that 200 million BGN had gone into someone’s pockets and that the reservoirs were built at prices at least three times higher, without documentation and without guarantees of their quality.
The Supreme Cassation Prosecutor’s Office has initiated proceedings based on the information released by the Ministry of Economy.
Sources:
- July 9, Report by the Interdepartmental Working Group (IWG) for Transparency and Control, appointed by Minister of Economy Kiril Petkov, Ministry of Economy, website.
- August 13, Parliamentary Control, statement by Maya Manolova.
- September 9, Press Conference of Kiril Petkov and Violeta Komitova, Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, website.
WHAT YOUR MONEY IS SPENT ON
Constructing, reinforcing, and maintaining reservoirs sounds like a legitimate responsibility for the state to undertake.
However, in Bulgaria, the creative endeavors of state-occupying bandits have turned reality into a dialectical negation of the concept of “care.” This negation is easily noticeable at both the highest strategic level—such as the schemes of the State Consolidation Company (DCC), which has supposedly fixed 10 and partially repaired another 18 reservoirs with half a billion levs, even if only on paper—and at the lowest local level, like in the case of the duck pond near Tsarev Brod. The only bright spot in this entire story is the sincere concern of the village mayor for what is happening under his leadership. The DCC is “repairing” a reservoir under the pretext of safety that is not, has never been, and will never be a threat to anyone. Meanwhile, it neglects other reservoirs where potential dangers could become a tragic reality. For half a billion. The Bulgarian state is a poor steward of Bulgaria’s reservoirs.
This text is part of the editorial content of the “Black Book of Government Waste in Bulgaria” for 2021, published by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom. The author is Diana Zhelyazkova.
