Sevlievo Municipality has awarded 40% of its public procurement spending between 2020 and 2026 to a group of companies with publicly traceable links through ownership, participation and management.
The finding comes from an analysis of data in Sigma, a public transparency tool for monitoring public procurement developed by the Ministry of Innovation and Digital Transformation. The system, presented yesterday, allows users to track all contracts since 2020, as well as identify which institutions have awarded the most contracts and which companies have received the largest amounts of public money from the state and municipalities.
Concentration among four companies
The Sevlievo dataset contains 292 contracts with a combined value of approximately €56 million. €22.2 million of that amount was paid to four companies through just 16 contracts awarded by Sevlievo Municipality. This represents around 43% of the municipality’s largest public procurement spending during the period under review.
The companies are Eko Tradeks Grup, Neo Titan, Eko Titan Grup, and Eko Tradeks Grup as part of a consortium.
The largest recipient is Eko Tradeks Grup, which received around €11.1 million through 13 contracts. That amounts to 20% of all public procurement funds awarded by Sevlievo Municipality.
It is followed by Neo Titan, with €6.5 million, or 11% of the public funds paid out.
Eko Tradeks Grup, as part of a consortium, received a further 4.3% of the funds, with the value of the contracts reaching €2.4 million.
The fourth company identified in the concentration of public spending is Eko Titan Grup, with a 4% share worth €2.2 million.
Companies with the same owners and managers
Publicly available ownership and management information shows links between the companies.
Eko Tradeks Grup is represented by Velichko Minev, while Tencho Lilyanov and Todorka Mineva are listed as its beneficial owners.
Lilyanov and Mineva are also the beneficial owners of Eko Titan Grup, which is likewise managed by Velichko Minev. The company is registered in Smolyan and its main business is the collection, transportation and disposal of municipal waste.
Neo Titan is based in Dimitrovgrad. Its owners, with equal shares, are Eko Tradeks Grup and Eko Tech. The company is also represented by Velichko Minev.
An analysis based on Sigma data shows that almost four out of every ten euros of public money during the period of just over five years went to these companies, which have a substantial presence in Sevlievo Municipality’s major infrastructure and utility spending.
A division of activities
What is particularly interesting is that the concentration does not appear to involve all companies carrying out the same type of work. Instead, a pattern of division by activity emerges.
Eko Tradeks Grup wins public contracts in construction and infrastructure. It has carried out the renovation and reconstruction of water supply pipelines, energy-efficiency renovations of public and residential buildings, and road and street repairs.
Neo Titan has just one contract – for the collection and transportation of mixed household waste in Sevlievo and the municipality’s villages.
Eko Titan Grup has a contract to operate the municipality’s waste-sorting facility.
In practice, this does not appear to be a case of one company winning everything. It looks more like an economic group with a presence across different areas of public spending.
The result, however, is that the flow of public money ultimately moves in the same direction.
Outside this group of companies with publicly traceable links, other major contractors include Kilteks, with around €3.1 million (5.6% of the total); ST Cleaner, with approximately €2.9 million (5.2%); and Vertical 90, with about €2.1 million (3.7%).
Although these companies are also among the largest recipients of public procurement funds from Sevlievo Municipality, each individually accounts for a significantly smaller share than the combined share of the group of linked companies.
Overall, Sigma data show that seven companies account for 55% of the public funds spent on procurement in Sevlievo over the past five years – slightly more than €30 million out of a total of approximately €56 million.
