Interior minister Ivan Demerdzhiev will answer questions from MPs about public contracts for road guardrails and about money said to have gone to flights for Delyan Peevski. In a second vote, parliament also rejected a request from the DPS party to call two more ministers to the hearing.
This story follows our earlier report on parliament's decision to reject four proposals for a hearing and accept only the one from Progressive Bulgaria.
MPs from that party proposed the hearing. They will ask Demerdzhiev about reports of bad practices in the installation of guardrails, and about information that money from these contracts paid for flights for Peevski, who leads the DPS. They also want to know how much the flights cost, how they were invoiced, who paid for them and who the people linked to them are.
Hamid Hamid of the DPS asked to change the subject of the hearing and the list of people to be questioned. Besides Demerdzhiev, he proposed hearing minister Ivan Shishkov and deputy prime minister Galab Donev. Hamid said Shishkov signed the most scandalous contracts, at "golden prices", under Donev's "magic formula".
Hamid said the Council of Ministers approved a change to Donev's decree yesterday. He said it adds Shishkov's "super formula" to the existing one, and that guardrail contracts that have already been indexed will be indexed again every 3 months.
"Why are minister Shishkov and Galab Donev hiding?" Hamid asked. "Maybe because reports are surfacing that advisers to prime minister Rumen Radev took part," he added. He said the advisers had been seen with "Niki the Guardrail" at game-breeding stations in hunting grounds. No charges have been brought against them.
Hamid said Demerdzhiev may also be able to explain what pressure led the head of the Motorways agency to resign, which guardrails he refused to install, and without which documents.
Milen Trifonov of Progressive Bulgaria replied that parliament is not a court and that nobody is hiding, which he said their actions show. Trifonov said anyone who broke the law would face its full weight, and that from now on laws would be applied differently.
MPs also turned down a DPS request to broadcast the hearing live on BNT.