Varna Loses EUR 225,000 European Funding due to Irregularities in Public Procurement

Nearly BGN 225 thousand will have to pay from its budget Municipality of Varna as a financial correction for violations in the organization of a public procurement contract for three road repairs. They are part of the second phase of its Integrated Urban Transport project. This is clear from the decision of the Administrative Court in Varna on a complaint of the municipality against the punishment imposed by the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works. It is the Managing Authority under the Operational Program "Regions in Growth", which finances the project, worth almost 39 million BGN, reports Dnevnik.

Performers of the renovations on the boulevards "Primorski", "Tsar Osvoboditel" and "Parvi May" are the company "Ingstroyengineering" and the sole trader "Stanka Vasileva". They are part of the companies that worked on all the infrastructure projects of the local administration during the three terms of office of the former mayor of Kiril Yordanov. On the basis of new public procurement and framework contracts, the same companies continued to operate without competition during the tenure of the current Varna mayor Ivan Portnich.

The repairs commissioned to Ingstroyengineering and Stanka Vasileva have a total value of about BGN 6.4 million. The two companies have won the tender with offers, defined by the local administration in Varna as "economically most advantageous". However, in the follow-up audit, following an alert, the managing authority (the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works) found that the attached award criteria were unlawful, which also led to unequal treatment of bidders and, as a result, to unlawful contractor selection.

Because of these irregularities, the financial correction imposed by...