Two employees accused of embezzling 371 000 leva from Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

A cashier and the chief accountant of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ (BAS) institute for experimental morphology, pathology and anthropology have embezzled 371 000 leva between 2010 and 2012, an internal BAS audit has found.

The audit was carried out in August and September, interim BAS president Evgeni Nikolov said on November 20.

The investigation found that a number of accounting documents were forged to show a number of the institute’s administrative employees receiving large salaries, higher than even those of the scientific staff. The audit also found that the chief accountant’s degree from the University of National and World Economy in Sofia to be a forgery.

The cashier has been fired, but the chief accountant had claimed extensive sick leave, Nikolov said. The BAS audit has been forwarded to the prosecutor’s office and the police on October 11 for further investigation, he said.

The institute has an annual budget of about one million leva and the BAS as a whole – 60 million leva, an allocation that has not increased under the current Cabinet’s term as it continues to pursue austerity policies.

(Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)

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