Photo: Municipality of Stara Zagora
The leading report of the Court of Auditors on the consolidated financial statement of the municipality of Stara Zagora for 2024 indicates that liabilities under concluded loan agreements amounting to BGN 19.3 million are a significant part of the municipality’s liabilities and are therefore identified as key in the report.
The results of an audit of 39 civil contracts worth BGN 152,680, concluded with seven employees of the Regional History Museum, which is a secondary budget administrator of the municipality of Stara Zagora, were verified for accuracy.
What the report says
In 20 of the contracts between the municipality as the contracting authority and museum employees, the signatures of the contractors – a tour guide and a curator – are missing. The five contracts with the museum director Petar Kalchev and another 14 with the accountant Tanya Tacheva are signed by both parties.
In the majority of the contracts, there is a duplication of activities outside the employment relationship with those included in the scope of the employees’ job duties. For example, the job description for the position of “accountant” states that he must “organize accounting records and reflect all business transactions in the accounts,” while the civil contract requires “accounting services and financial closing.”
The Regional History Museum has not provided any documents or information showing that the activities under the civil contracts were performed outside the working hours of the employees.
The contracts include clauses for payment of remuneration within 5 working days after completion of the assigned work and signing of a handover protocol by the parties, without objections or comments from the contracting authority.
The audit team was not presented with documents proving that the assigned activities were performed in full, on time and with the required quality, and that they were accepted by the client, which is the legal basis for the payment of remuneration under civil contracts.
In an explanation from the museum, it is stated that “the fees paid to the teams are for activities related to field archaeological research and daily diverse documentation,” in accordance with the Ordinance of the Minister of Culture.
No individual protocols for work performed on the respective site have been issued for the civil contracts. It is certified by the protocols of commissions specially appointed by the Ministry of Culture and the reports submitted to the National Archaeological Institute with Museum (NAIM) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for each individual site.
In the ten contracts concluded with contractors who were employees of the museum in the period May-December 2024, the contracting authority is the director of the museum. The contracts with Petar Kalchev were awarded by the Municipality of Stara Zagora.
Violations mentioned in the report of the Court of Auditors
All 39 civil contracts checked have no documents for preliminary and subsequent control by a director, accountant, or persons designated for this purpose, in accordance with the requirements of the Public Sector Financial Management and Control Act.
Provisions of the Obligations and Contracts Act regarding the contracting authority’s obligation to accept the work performed under the contract and the Accounting Act regarding the payment of salaries and remuneration to staff under non-employment legal relationships have not been complied with.
The provisions of the Public Sector Financial Management and Control Act and the Public Finance Act have not been complied with, which is a violation of budgetary discipline.
No signature of the recipient
The indisputable conclusions reflected in the report are as follows:
First, the BGN 152,680 in question was distributed in violation of various laws and regulations, without the recipient’s signature, which should be classified and investigated as document fraud.
It is unclear whether the amount under each of these contracts was ultimately received by the employee whose name appears in the contract or not.
The coincidence between the activities in the job description of the respective museum employee and those described in his civil contract, as well as the lack of evidence that the activities in the civil contract were performed outside working hours, give rise to suspicion of fraud for financial gain.
The lack of documentation on the civil contracts, which records the activity, its scope, quality, and deadline, as well as a protocol stating that it has been accepted by the client, casts doubt on the legality of the payment of the amounts under the civil contracts.
After all these facts, the following questions remain unanswered:
On what basis did the Municipality of Stara Zagora conclude these five civil contracts with the director of the Regional History Museum, Petar Kalchev?
Does Petar Kalchev have the right to participate in field research during his working hours as director, or did he use paid (unpaid) leave for the duration of the civil contracts?
Does the museum’s accountant, Tanya Tacheva, who is of retirement age, like Director Kalchev, work in the same position at the Art Gallery in Stara Zagora, and under what contract—a second employment contract or a civil contract? How did she manage to combine the two positions and also find time to perform 14 civil contracts?
