Bulgaria's recently-appointed Defence Minister Nikolai Tsonev has ordered a halt to the practice of swopping real estate owned by the ministry, an April 29 2008 media statement said.

The ministry's website said that the ministry would investigate the status of all the ministry's structures and real estate owned by them.

Tsonev succeeded Vesselin Bliznakov on April 22 2008. Bulgarian-language media said at the time that one reason that Bliznakov was dismissed was alleged lack of transparency in transactions involving defence ministry real estate.

Prime Minister  Sergei Stanishev gave no reason in public why Bliznakov was replaced, but media reports in the past 18 months have given an unfavourable impression of Bliznakov and the swop deals.

The reason appears simple: compared to his predecessors, Bliznakov was very active in approving deals involving ministry property.

After the latest reductions to the Bulgarian military, involving the discharge of hundreds of officers and the closing down of units and military bases, the military was left with hundreds of properties of all kinds. No longer needed, the properties were put up for disposal.

In early February 2008, Bliznakov welcomed a decision by Stanishev allowing the ministry to go ahead with deals involving defence ministry land.

Bliznakov was given the right to personally approve the deals and to decide which properties would be sold and which would be swopped for other properties that could better serve the military's needs. The argument behind this decision was that it was the ministry, and not the state as a whole, that would be the sole beneficiary of the deals.

According to various media reports, only 10 per cent of the properties marked as "ready to go" were going to be offered for exchange, and the rest 90 per cent were to be sold.

The ministry even published a list of 30 properties to be swopped for apartments, solving the problem of accommodation for serving military personnel. 

Many of these 30 properties were interesting from a business point of view. The list was full of large army storage facilities and land in Sofia and other major cities.

Some were close to the Lyulin Highway, which is currently being built.

The problem with these deals was that while information on the properties was put on the ministry's website, no information was released about the outcomes of the deals, Bulgarian-language media said.  Officials and business people objected to the lack of transparency.

An example was Samokov mayor Angel Nikolov, who in February 2008 voiced objection to a deal that Bliznakov had approved. The deal involved a change of ownership of a former army unit in Samokov which had on its premises the city water tanks. Naidenov feared that the new owner might hinder the city's access to the water tanks.