How a French Company Violated Bulgarian Regulations

2021-01-15

SOFIA - Excessive water cuts for its consumers, questionable management of tendering procedures, constant increases in water prices in the face of significant leaks in its outdated infrastructure. These features of a global water giant, repeatedly highlighted by the press, are no longer a secret in France.

Elsewhere, however, other countries are paying a high price for the privatisation of water by the French. In Bulgaria too, Veolia has exported its practices - with the usual degree of drift.

Is this a well thought-out system? A “Veolia” system which, based on this list of features, allows the company to make great profits? In uncovering this story, the journalists draw a parallel between the case of the company’s operation in the city of Sofia through Sofiyska Voda and the well-known scandals involving the company in France as well as in other Europeans countries.

The specificity of this case seems to lie in a possible violation of the Bulgarian public procurement framework by the company through one of its subsidiaries: SADE France. But also in the troubling attribution of other procurements to Burgargeomin Ltd, the notorious company at the centre of a state scandal in Bulgaria for the hijacking of a Libyan tanker in 2018 and owned by Tsvetan Tsanev, a former Soviet-era intelligence officer linked to the Cosa Nostra mafia organisation.

Photo: Bastamag.net

Team members

Alexandre Brutelle

Alexandre Brutelle is a foreign reporter and freelance investigative journalist.

Marin Nikolov

Marin Nikolov is a TV journalist, based in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Supported

€5,000 allocated on 23/01/2020

ECB/2019/JA3A/545

Grant

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