MPs from Bulgaria’s ruling Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party indirectly accused President Rumen Radev of corruption and bribe taking in a highly tense parliament debate over the procedure for the purchase of new fighter jets. 

Earlier this year, Bulgaria’s interim government, appointed by Radev, provisionally picked Saab to supply JAS-39 Gripen fighters to the airforce, but the decision has since been questioned. The October 5 parliament session ended in a vote where a substantial majority of MPs backed a report by a special ad hoc parliamentary committee that recommended the process be relaunched from scratch. 

In September, the parliamentary committee investigating Bulgaria's acquisition of new fighter jets concluded that the ministry of defence should reconsider all three bids already received and give a chance to other bidders as well. The report listed a number of problems with the military project, including the rejection, with no legal basis, of a joint offer from the US and Portugal to sell Bulgaria used F-16 fighter jets. 

It was backed by 126 MPs to 59 against, with four abstentions, a parliament statement said. 

During the fierce debate ahead of the vote, GERB MP Anton Todorov indirectly accused Radev of taking bribes to choose Saab’s offer over the US-Portuguese offer of second hand F-16s and the Italian offer of secondhand Eurofighter Typhoons. Centre-right GERB has sought to reopen the discussion over the fighter jet purchase since returning to power in May. 

“He [President Radev] was motivated by a pat on his shoulder, he has not taken [BGN]5mn, do not think this,” Todorov said ironically, according to daily Dnevnik, implying that Radev had actually taken BGN5mn as a bribe to recommend the approval of Saab's offer.

Another MP from the ruling party, Vladimir Toshev, asked a rhetorical question as to how Radev’s presidential campaign had been financed and whether it had included “Gripen money”.

In response, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), which backed Radev’s candidacy for president, accused GERB MPs of trying to undermine the president.

“What you are doing, regardless of how you are trying to cover it up, is a war against the presidential institution,” the BSP’s leader Korneliya Ninova told GERB during the debate.

BSP MPs also claimed that GERB was attacking Radev in order to clear the road to the presidency for its leader, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov.

Earlier in October, Radev said the tensions over the selection of fighter jets were the result of a GERB offensive against him and added that “if they seek [a battle with me], they will get it”. On the other hand, Borissov said he does not have problem with Radev as their “violins play in one tone”.

The dispute over the selection of jets has become highly politicised. The leader of the parliamentary committee that recommended restarting the procedure – GERB’s Emil Hristov — has accused Radev of changing the rules of the auction after the terms were endorsed by MPs. Meanwhile, BSP MP Filip Popov has claimed that the committee’s report is biased.

Radev was Air Force Commander and head of the board in charge of selecting the jet fighter supplier in July 2016, when the board added a new criteria on deferred payments to the selection criteria. Reportedly, the offer of the US and Portugal to sell refurbished F-16 jets was rejected based on that specific criteria. However, Dimitar Stoyanov, an adviser to Radev both now and during the selection procedure, said on September 20 that he cannot know for sure whether the deferred payment procedure was the reason to reject the offer of the F-16s.