Vesselin Georgiev, executive director of Bulgaria's National Road Infrastructure Fund (NRIF), faces the sack after recent rows surrounding the NRIF prompted the European Commission (EC) to recommend Bulgaria's Finance Ministry suspended the payment of EU funds managed by the NRIF.

The claim was made by Dnevnik daily, which quoted unnamed senior officials in the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the senior partner in Bulgaria's ruling coalition.

At the beginning of January 2008, Kapital weekly wrote that Vesselin Georgiev picked the company managed by his brother for road repair and road cleaning procurement contracts worth 120 million leva. The discussion on whether there was a conflict of interest in this situation, however, hardly turned out to be NRIF's sole problem.

On January 24, two NRIF employees, the director for the department for absorbing European funds, Lyubomir Lilov, and his subordinate Ivan Vladimirov, were arrested for taking bribes. All this eventually led to the EC asking Bulgaria to suspend payments of EU funds managed by the NRIF for road infrastructure projects until the investigation of the three NRIF officials accused of corruption was over.

According to politicians, all these events made the replacement of Vesseling Georgiev inevitable, Dnevnik said.

On February 3, representatives of the co-ruling National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) started unofficial talks on his dismissal, which they are likely to request after the audits at the NRIF carried out by the Finance and by the Transport and Communications Ministries' inspectorates were over, Dnevnik daily said.

The audits were due to be completed on February 1, but their results are yet to be announced and the are expected to come out later this week. NMSP expects the inspectorates' audits to confirm the unofficial information it has that while the NRIF has outstanding liabilities to different road cleaning and road maintenance companies worth 140 million leva, the company managed by Georgiev's brother has received all the money under contract.

A senior BSP official commented that Vesselin Georgiev would be replaced long before NMSP even brings up the topic, Dnevnik daily said. According to BSP members of parliament all the January 2008 rows surrounding the NRIF, as well as EU's concerns made Georgiev's dismissal inevitable.

The ruling coalition hopse the problems at the NRIF would be solved by the beginning of March 2008, when an audit by Brussels on the money used under the Transport operational programme is expected to be carried out.

Meanwhile, Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB) had prepared a draft decision for a motion of no confidence in the Government and had distributed it among the other opposition groups, DSB announced on February 3, as reported by Dnevnik daily. The main motive for the motion is the conflict of interest and the corruption at the NRIF.