Sat, Nov 21 2009

Bulgaria arrests boss of Terem military holding

Wed, Sep 09 2009 22:29 CET byClive Leviev-Sawyer 883 Views
Bulgaria arrests boss of Terem military holding

The Terem plant in Veliko Turnovo in 2002, when it was involved in the destruction of Soviet-era weaponry before Bulgaria's admission to Nato.

Photo: Krassimir Yuskeseliev

The executive director of Bulgaria’s Terem military holding, Zhechko Petrov, was arrested on September 9 2009 in connection with alleged large-scale embezzlement reportedly adding up to more than five million leva.
 
Sofia City Prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov said that Petrov faced charges of misappropriating huge sums of money in an abuse of his official capacity.
 
According to a report by Bulgarian National Television (BNT), the alleged embezzlement involved a contract for the destruction of military materiel.
 
One of the conditions of the contract with the Defence Ministry was that the work would not be sub-contracted, but Terem had signed deals with two private companies under the umbrella of Evroremonstroi.
 
BNT quoted Kokinov as saying that the money for the contract was transferred through a subsidiary of Terem by private companies.
 
Asked whether these private companies were linked to Petrov, Kokinov said that this was being looked into because "we consider extremely strange the way in which the private companies were selected".
 
The private companies were not licenced to work with this kind of dangerous ammunition, Kokinov said.
 
Petrov was being held in 72-hour detention and it was expected that prosecutors would ask that he be remanded in custody without bail pending trial.
 
Petrov was also being investigated in connection with a missing 19 million leva detected during a tax audit of Terem during August 2009.
 
Terem dates from 1963, when it was set up to bring together the Defence Ministry’s military repair plants to deal with the armament and equipment of Bulgaria’s armed forces.
 
Through a 1998 Cabinet decree, the Military Industry Department of the Ministry of Defence was transformed into a sole-proprietor joint stock company, Terem EAD, 100 per cent owned by the state
 
There are 13 branches of the company in Bulgaria, which carry out various activities in the field of repair of armament and equipment.
 
Through a ruling by Sofia City Court in 2000, the company was reorganised by separating four branches from it and transforming them into sole-proprietor limited liability companies under state ownership.
 
The major activities of Terem, according to its website, are overhaul and medium repair of military equipment, armament, ammunition, etc., manufacture of individual small series of various military equipment, installations, machines and apparatuses, import, export, advertising, marketing, engineering, research, development and enhancement of special and commercial products, services, technical assistance and training and other industrial and commercial activities, permitted by law, in Bulgaria and abroad.
 
The rights of the state as sole proprietor of Terem EAD capital are exercised by the Minister of Defence.
 
 

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