While Canadian gold mining industry investor Dundee Precious Metals (DPM) continues to await a decision by the Environment and Waters Ministry (MOEW) on the company’s project in Chelopech, the UK’s Financial Times published a report on January 17 headlined “Bulgaria’s image tarnished for many overseas investors”.

Written by Kerin Hope, the article told foreign investors that they might meet “unexpected obstacles” to their investment intentions.

Chelopech Mining project executive director Laurence Marsland told the FT: “You would expect bureaucratic obstacles to fade away as (European Union) accession approached but that hasn’t happened”.

Hope wrote that “Bulgarian politicians are critical of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, an ethnic Turkish political party in the governing coalition, which controls the Environment Ministry, for failing to curb corrupt practices. Ahmed Dogan, its leader, has spoken publicly about ‘a circle of companies’ that enjoys close relationships with his party”.

The article said: “Evdokia Maneva, a former environment minister, said in a recent parliamentary debate that as many as 400 permits were being held up at the Environment Ministry. ‘It is clear that corruption is intended,’ she said.”

Approached by The Sofia Echo for comment, the MOEW refused.

However, Konstantin Dichev of Green Balkans Federation of nature-conservation NGOs, former chairperson of the parliamentary commission on environment, said in a media statement: “Dundee’s statement that Bulgaria is a corruption morass is true, but Dundee itself has not a small share of this being reality.”

Dichev made points that he said had been “forgotten” by Hope. He based his response on the Bulgarian-language version of her article, published in Bulgarian newspaper Dnevnik on January 17. He said that DPM intended to use 1000 tons of cyanide a year in the area, which was the most vulnerable to an vertical earthquake on the Balkans.

“It is just a question of time before the whole of southern Bulgaria and the Trakia lowland are irrevocably polluted because of pollution of underground and surface waters,” he said.

Dichev alleged that DPM was involved in “a criminal agreement with MOEW from the time of former minister Dolores Arsenova” to start construction of an “illegal inclined gallery in the mine” of Chelopech. In addition, Dichev alleged that DPM was exporting ores extracted without calculating value added tax.

Responding to allegations against Dundee, “Marsland says the new plant is designed to outperform EU standards for cyanide levels in waste water” according to the Financial Times article. The FT said that “Dundee is already making a fall-back plan to build its gold extraction plant outside Bulgaria”.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Environment Minister Djevdet Chakurov said that DPM was “a very good investor” but that the Government had to examine closely issues raised by local residents and environmental groups.

“We want satisfied investors but we also have to protect national interests,” Chakurov said.