„I really expected there to be some development in this direction, due to certain differences between me and the current leadership of the ministry“. This was stated in the studio of „Offensive with Lyubo Ognyanov“ on NOVA NEWS by the former BFSA director Dr. Angel Mavrovski, commenting on his dismissal from the post of head of the agency.
According to him, the main disagreements are related to border control. „Our biggest differences are regarding the state of the borders in the country and the fact that I believe that control should be at a much higher level, including with external experts“, he pointed out.
Regarding the case with the irregularities revealed at the „Kapitan Andreevo“ border checkpoint Mavrovski said that his team had encountered serious problems early on. "It took about three months to uncover the violations in border inspections. It was about pesticide inspections of food coming in from Turkey," he said.
He claims that there are also serious gaps in the control systems. "We discovered remote access to the computers and that every protocol that comes out of there can be manipulated," Mavrovski said. When asked if this meant remote access to the systems, he replied: "Yes, including".
According to him, there are insufficient protections. "It turns out that there is no problem with cybersecurity, because there is none," he pointed out. He added that the Directorate of the Anti-Corruption Bureau confirmed after an inspection that the manipulation was possible and "this is something that is not difficult to happen".
According to him, significant quantities of unregulated products were also discovered. "What we discovered were boxes of tallow and tails", he explained, adding that these were lamb and sheep products. "I cannot say why such goods enter the European Union in such quantities", Mavrovski pointed out, but in one of the cases "we are talking about 38 tons, which we discovered in Svilengrad".
According to him, these are organized channels for illegal import. "It turns out that we have fake stamps, fake documents with which they travel to Europe. It's a whole channel," he said.
"Tens of millions per month" is how Mavrovski estimated the potential damage from unregulated imports, admitting that the real values could be higher. According to him, it is a well-organized scheme. "This doesn't happen alone. There is a whole channel," he said.
Mavrovski also claims that there are cases of "preliminarily examined trucks". "We even have data on trucks that were tested for pesticide residues before entering the border", he pointed out. According to him, the border systems lack adequate control. "There is no video surveillance, which is even more worrying", he said.
The former director also commented on the question of why the signals are being submitted only now. “We have not stopped working on the topic “Captain Andreevo“. This requires an enormous amount of time and preparation“, he said. He added that he had filed signals with the institutions. “Many signals have been sent“, said Mavrovski, citing cases of violations in disinfection in the Plovdiv region and suspicions of the so-called “phantom animals“.
In his words, part of the cash flows could be connected “to different individuals“. Mavrovski did not name specific names, but said: “Let the prosecutor's office sort out these activities.