These two stories take us to the distant 2008. The National Science Fund was then headed by Anastas Gerdjikov (former vice-minister of education). The Institute for Metallurgy applied for funding for two different projects - one on nano-modified alloys and one anti-terrorist systems. The former project scores the bare minimum for funding a project - 83 points and the latter 61.25 points. It is not clear how, but the two projects are joined into one and both get funded to the tune of 280 000 and 600 000 lev, respectively. The PI of the former project is Valentin Manolov, the PI of the latter is Stefan Vodenicharov.
To make a long story short, two more violations are found. According to the rules of the Fund, only 35% of a grant can be spent on salaries. Here, Vodenicharov's project bumped this up to 66.3% resulting in an overpayment of salaries of 83 750 lev. In addition, 25 000 lev have been given to the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with no documentation for the purpose or recipient of this payment.
Who's responsible and who's to blame? The Agency for government financial control has filed two lawsuits against the heads of the Fund (Gerdjikov and Horozov) who have approved the budgets (2008 and 2010) of the project despite the glaring violation. The heads of the Fund deny responsibility saying they just signed what was handed to them by their underlings. The Agency also requests that the sum of 83 750 + 25 000 lev are returned which, of course, is not going to happen because the money has long been spent. According to the Fund's award contract, the PI is held responsible if the money is mismanaged, however it seems like the entity held responsible is the Institute for Metallurgy, not the PI himself. In his response, the Minister of Education denies that there is any reason for the money to be returned - claims he didn't know of the 35% limit and he never received any of the money himself anyways.
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