Bulgarian authorities tried to illegally sell rusty ammunition to Ukraine

Bulgarian journalists have published a story in which they described how members of the Bulgarian government tried to illegally send to Ukraine several consignments of rusty and unusable artillery shells of various calibres. The cost of this corrupt deal is estimated at 200 million dollars.

Journalists from OCCRP’s partner centres Bivola (Bulgaria) and Fundacja Reporterów (Poland) found evidence of weapons deliveries from Bulgaria to Ukraine bypassing the parliamentary ban. Investigators say Bulgarian government officials involved in the deal may have received kickbacks of $5 to $15 million.

Earlier, the media had already published stories that Bulgaria might send weapons to Ukraine with the help of intermediary companies in Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the USA. Nevertheless, documentary evidence of these deliveries has been published for the first time.

The material presents documents of a deal between the Bulgarian company Alguns and the Romanian state corporation CN RomArm S.A., subordinated to the Romanian Ministry of Economy, on deliveries to Ukraine of ammunition manufactured in the 1980s, which Bulgaria purchased from Belarus from 2015 to 2020. The total value of the deliveries to Kiev by sources from the Bulgarian parliament and special services is estimated at $200 million.

“According to the documents, in early May Alguns was to supply 122 mm shells for the BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher, 122 mm shells for the D-30 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer for the regiment, 152 mm shells for the D-20 Acacia self-propelled howitzer for the division as well as 130 mm artillery shells. The Romanian company pledged to immediately send the ammunition to Ukraine,” the investigation said.

However, the Ukrainian and Romanian sides were dissatisfied with the condition of the supplied ammunition, many of which turned out to be deformed or rusted. Bivola journalists published a video of the shells from the returned batch. The ammunition, which Bulgaria tried to sell to Ukraine, was manufactured back in the 1980s in the USSR. It is assumed that all the deals were approved by the country’s former prime minister, who has publicly denied arms deliveries from Bulgaria to Ukraine

We shall remind you that Bulgaria has had an official ban on arms deliveries to Ukraine since May 2022, which was imposed by the country’s parliament. Former Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Korneliya Ninova, who until recently held the position of the head of the Interdepartmental Commission for Arms Export Control at the Ministry of Economy and Industry, has denied any arms supplies to Ukraine. No Bulgarian company can export arms without the approval of this commission. It is assumed that it was she who personally signed off on his corrupt commitments to send Soviet-era ammunition to Ukraine.

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