• Diplomacy Bulgaria rekindles tensions between the EU and Moscow by expelling a Russian diplomat

The government that will manage the reconstruction funds allocated to

Bulgaria

, the poorest country with the highest corruption rates of the 27, remains in limbo. The general elections held early this Sunday have yielded, according to exit polls, almost identical results to those of April. While waiting for the final ones to be announced, in the next few days, the news is that the GERB, the conservative party of the populist Boiko, would have lost 4 percentage points, from 26% in April to 22% and that the anti-system party "There is such a people "(ITN) of Slavi Trifonov rises, on the contrary, from 17.6% to 21.5%.

None can form a majority.

The elections have been held in an inappropriate climate in a community country. The Police have opened 5,100 files and arrested about 750 people for attempted fraud and vote buying. And that, while the interim government appointed by President Rumen Radev pulled the blanket and brought to light what no one wanted to see:

corrupt and mafia practices

in ministries and state institutions, wiretapping of political opponents and mismanagement of the pandemic of Covid-19 with only 16% of the population vaccinated.

Borisov and his apparatus resist the exit, although in Bulgaria leaving politics is not leaving power and he was always close to him. He was the

bodyguard of the last of the communist leader

, Todor Zhivkov, and later the owner of a security company with a large clientele. When Zhivkov was released from prison to serve house arrest, the authorities, who were still haunted by officials of the old regime, sent Borisov to him. And coincidence or not, it was also Borisov who was in charge of ensuring the safety of King Simeon II when he returned to the country from his long exile in Spain to become Prime Minister. In 2005 he decided that others would turn their backs on him and founded the GERB party, with which he

has governed three legislatures.

In the April elections Borisov again won victory, but could not form a coalition.

President Radev entrusted that task to the ITN, which also failed, and then, with the same result, to the Socialists.

After completing the three attempts established by the Constitution, Ravev formed an interim government, put Stefan Yaneve, a military man with the rank of general, like himself, in charge, and called new elections.

A new attempt with the same icing.

Bulgaria will be one of the main beneficiaries of EU transfers

, including € 16.6 billion (27% of 2020 GDP) from the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework and € 7.5 billion (12% of GDP) in grants of the NGEU.

A long history of corruption

In an attempt to mark a new and above all cleaner beginning, the interim government opened the windows. The Interior Minister, Boiko Rashkov, discovered that as a result of the wave of demonstrations in 2020, up to a hundred politicians and citizens had been wiretapped and put the Prosecutor's Office to investigate the facts.

Also in May, the famous landowner Svetoslav Ilchovski denounced before a parliamentary commission that people close to the GERB were extorting him and that to scare him, they had shown him a video that supposedly showed another wealthy businessman being abused in prison. Ilchovski also referred to the famous photos of Borisov's nightstand leaked to the press, with

piles of 500-euro bills and gold bars

. The images, apparently, had been taken by a Playboy model and a prostitute. For Borisov it was a plot designed by his enemies to discredit him and his party.

The thing is not there.

Economy Minister Kiril Petkov denounced that the State-owned Bulgarian Development Bank aimed at financing small and medium-sized enterprises had distributed nearly € 500 million in loans to just eight companies and announced an audit.

And on July 8, Finance Minister Assen Vassilev revealed that 40% of public funds granted between 2019-21 for infrastructure and reconstruction projects went to companies without competition and were carried out without transparency.

As if that were not enough, the United States imposed sanctions a few weeks ago on companies linked to Bulgarian oligarchs and politicians for their alleged involvement in bribery.

It has been the

largest individual action against corruption to date anywhere in the world

under the Magnitsky Act.

Washington's intervention is embarrassing for the EU, which has been pouring out European funds without worrying about the hands into which they fell, ignoring the octopus created by the old guard to cling to power like a criminal gang, preventing for its own benefit the development of the economy and well-being of Bulgarians.

Brussels has not taken action on a well-known issue.

Now it has two new instruments to do so, the European Public Prosecutor's Office and the mechanism that links funding and the rule of law.

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