Hristo Valchanov has been appointed Executive Director of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BFSA) by order of Prime Minister Galab Donev, the Agriculture Ministry said in a press release on Wednesday.
Valchanov was so far BFSA Deputy Executive Director. He served as executive director of the Agency between July 2021 and January 2022. He is a veterinary medicine graduate from the Trakia Univesity of Stara Zagora (Southeastern Bulgaria).
Valchanov's predecessor, Hristo Daskalov, was dismissed for violating election legislation, Deputy Agriculture Minister Krum Nedelkov told a news briefing earlier on Wednesday. Having run for parliament as candidate of Continue the Change, Daskalov returned to work from leave on Monday, ahead of the release by the Central Election Commission of the name list of the elected MPs. Nedelkov explained that also on Monday Daskalov dismissed and appointed employees and irregularly concluded an annex to an expired contract. Then he left on a business trip to Italy paid for under a project of an entity within the BFSA system. Agriculture Minister Yavor Gechev was not informed of any of these actions and categorically does not tolerate them, Nedelkov said.
Daskalov confirmed to www.mediapool.bg that he did return to work on Monday but argued that this can only be punished by an administrative sanction and not by dismissal. He claimed that he did not dismiss anybody and did not sign annexes to expired contracts but did sign orders blocking the possibility of private company Eurolab 2011 recovering its phytosanitary control laboratory at the Kapitan Andreevo Checkpoint (on Bulgaria's border with Turkey). "I found that the way for this [recovery] had been paved in my absence by my deputy who was appointed by the caretaker cabinet," Daskalov told mediapool. Regarding his working visit to Italy, he explained that he undertook it in his capacity as leader of a pig-breeding project under the EU's research and innovation funding programme Horizon 2020.
/DT/
news.modal.text
Nothing available