BULGARIAN MP DELYAN DOBREV GIVES UP HIS PARLIAMENTARY IMMUNITY

Delyan Dobrev, a Bulgarian MP from the centre-right GERB party, will give up his parliamentary immunity, the press centre of the GERB parliamentary group said in a statement on 24th of October. Dobrev will submit an application to voluntarily give up his immunity from prosecution at 16:00 h today, the press statement says.

Earlier today, Bulgarias’ Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov requested that Dobrev’s immunity be lifted on the ground of suspected damages exceeding EUR 4.5 m to the state owned National Electricity Company (NEC) in relation to the Belene nuclear project.

In 2012 when Dobrev was Minister of the Economy, Energy and Tourism, he failed to stop payments from NEC to Belene NPP contractor Parsons E&C Europe Limited, even though the project was cancelled in March 2012. According to the prosecution, Delyan Dobrev did not take any steps to stop those payments despite that NEC had sent several reminders.

Prosecutors said that the investigation concerning the cancelled Belene Nuclear power plant project was going on in different directions and actions of other officials related to the energy field were also being checked.

This is the fourth investigation for damages in connection with Belene nuclear project. Last week, the Prosecutor’s Office pressed charges against the former Economy Minister Petar Dimitrov, from the cabinet of the triple coalition, and two former heads of NEC. The charges against them were for signing disadvantageous deals resulting in damages to the state.