2024-10-03 16:51:03
Conductor Levon Manukyan has not yet posted his BGN 50,000 bail, he is out of custody
Police officers from Plovdiv are interrogating the director of the Rhodope Drama Theater “Nikolay Haitov” Rumen Bechev. The questioning is in connection with the investigation into fictitious appointments in theaters in Razgrad and Smolyan.
“He has been brought in for questioning in Plovdiv, no charges have yet been brought against Rumen Bechev,” Galin Gavrilov, the supervising prosecutor of the investigation, told “24 Chasa”. And he added that tomorrow he will consider whether to bring him under responsibility.
According to him, there is a scheme in the Smolyan Theater, led by Bechev, which the prosecution compares to the one in Razgrad, where funds in the amount of nearly BGN 1 million were siphoned off for the salaries of 41 fictitiously appointed people.
Before “24 Chasa” on Tuesday, Bechev denied that he had appointed people according to schemes. He admits that he appointed temporary people, but he cannot say for what sums, and that he knows Petko Piskov – designated as the mastermind of the whole scheme. The theater in Smolyan and the one in Razgrad used the same accounting firm. According to Piskov’s recommendations, the theater in Smolyan appointed about 30 people – people who found places to stage performances and dealt with organizational matters.
The artists in the Rhodope Troupe are amazed at what happened.
According to investigators from Plovdiv, there is no way that only the directors of these provincial theaters are at the heart of this grand scheme. “They just took advantage to finance their theaters, and the money goes in another direction,” added Gavrailov.
Conductor Levon Manukyan has been released from custody, but he has not yet posted the BGN 50,000 bail. The deadline for this is October 10.