site.btaEnergy Minister Says Contract with BOTAS Will Cost Bulgaria Billions, Counter-Corruption Commission Investigates Case

Representatives of the Counter-Corruption Commission (CCC) arrived Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. at the Ministry of Energy building. The CCC was provided with documents containing all information in the ministry related to the contract with the Turkish energy company BOTAS, Energy Minister Zhecho Stankov told journalists in Rome on Thursday regarding Wednesday's action.

"As chair of the National Assembly committee tasked with establishing all the facts and circumstances, the report I compiled at the time was dozens of pages long, making it clear that the Bulgarian state was paying over a million a day for this contract on a daily basis, and since the beginning of the year - even a million and fifty thousand, because this contract is indexed," said Stankov.

According to him, the current situation is such that only 11% of the capacity of this contract has been used, or in other words, for every BGN 100 that Bulgaria pays for capacity, only BGN 13 are used for actual transmission.

At present, over BGN 500 million have been invoiced to Bulgargaz, with only BGN 100 million representing the physical capacity actually used under the contract with BOTAS, the energy minister said.

Minister Stankov has given the companies bound by this contract a mandate to negotiate with the Turkish company. He explained that representatives of BOTAS were in Sofia a few weeks ago. Intensive negotiations are underway, but the contract is extremely favorable for the Turkish side and will cost Bulgaria billions over 13 years. Furthermore, there is no termination clause in the contract, which makes renegotiation extremely difficult. "We have the right to renegotiate it once, and it must be negotiated very carefully so that we can break out of this vicious circle," Stankov added.