"The current management of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food led by Minister Valeri Tsvetanov and Vice-premier Meglena Plugchieva is not qualified enough" Dimitur Tadarukov (former executive director of State Fund Agriculture) said this morning for bTV, cited by ‘Econ.bg and News.bg.

"I command Meglena Plugchieva for working with panache but this panache is far too emotional, has too large a scale and lacks planning" Tadarukov said.

"Yes, there are issues in the sector, there are issues in the Fund but the poor projects are hardly 3.5% of the total number" he stated explicitly.

He further explained that all the bad projects due to which Bulgaria undergoes sanctions had been approved in the period between 2001 and 2004. At that time Meglena Plugchieva was the head of the monitoring committee.

Tadarukov also pointed out that after the last audit which did not find any irregularities the management in the person of Meglena Plugchieva, Dimitur Ivanovski and Valeri Tsvetanov went to Brussels and came back with the news of stopped funding.

"I am offended by the fact that the management above me did not defend the position of protecting Bulgaria's interests and cause" Tadarukov added and asked "Why should the whole country be the victim of 3.5%?"

In his opinion Brussels has no good reasons to forbid the use of funding form the state budget for financing the projects and if our "guilt is established" and we receive a "sentence" then "Brussels will get their money, everything will be paid back".

"While I was the director of State Fund Agriculture there was no corruption" Dimitur Tadarukov stated. He declared the leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms Ahmed Dogan to be "a large-scale philosopher and more of a Bulgarian than a lot of Bulgarians" Tadarukov said that in the past ten years he had about ten meetings with the late head of Ahmed Dogan's office - Ahmed Emin but not one of those meetings was personal or took part while Tadarukov was the head of the fund.