Comment by Emilia Milcheva:
High treason in the service of organized crime? There is no such qualification in the Bulgarian Penal Code. But when senior police officers, prosecutors and counterintelligence officers send signals, parts of investigations, transcripts of conversations intercepted with special intelligence means (SRS), prosecutorial decrees, as well as drafts of such, to a person known by his nickname, accused of serious crimes, this is treason - not just to the law, but to the state itself.
This is not corruption in its classic sense, but direct subordination of the institutions to the "deep state".
The institutions are silent
The civil movement BOEC and the Bureau for Investigative Reporting and Data (BIRD) have distributed documents from the period 2014-2020, handed over to them by an unknown citizen, which are believed to be part of the archive of former investigator Petyo Petrov - Euroto. He is accused of document fraud on a particularly large scale. The main character of the Anti-Corruption Fund's (ACF) investigation "The Eight Dwarfs", which revealed how businesses are being taken over and robbed with the help of the judicial system, is currently missing. Petrov left Bulgaria unmolested, like all defendants with well-founded connections to power and politics.
The prosecutor's office, headed by Borislav Sarafov - himself a visitor to the "The Eight Dwarfs" restaurant - ignored the revelations. The other institutions are doing the same.
The "Black Box" behind the scenes
In all likelihood, the most valuable part of the Euro archive was hidden - so that it could be used as insurance and a bat. In March of last year, bags of physical evidence were seized from Petyo Petrov's properties in Bulgaria and Greece, and ended up in the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office. Even then, in an interview with Free Europe, the former head of the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office Nevena Zartova indicated that among the documents there were previously prepared prosecutorial decrees. The ACF expressed doubts that it will hardly ever be clear what happened to the information carriers.
The opened "black box" confirms the schemes that non-governmental organizations, investigative journalists, politicians, and investors are talking about - schemes in which the administration of justice is replaced by a mafia inquisition, or by ransom. It is clearly visible how prosecutors, police officers, and SANS employees work in sync to carry out the orders.
One of the documents, for example, reveals how a well-known businessman in the agricultural sector paid 500 thousand leva to have two pre-trial proceedings against him terminated in 2018. The sentence is impressive: "Because … (the name of a prosecutor is mentioned - b.a.) and the supervising prosecutor in the two DPs do not shine with legal training and could not find any reasonable legal basis for terminating the cases, they turned to a well-known law firm, where the termination orders were prepared. The report states that the same prosecutor herself sought contact with the businessman "to fix his cases for a fee". She did it again. And helpers were immediately found - prosecutors from the "Anti-Corruption" unit of the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office, and high-ranking bosses from the customs, and from the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP).
The named prosecutor was a frequent guest at the "Osemte dvujeta" restaurant, as is understood from an interview with ACF in 2023. of Lyubena Petrova, now the ex-wife of Euroto.
Prosecutors have sent their "capo", over whom there was undoubtedly a political umbrella, to "sign" or pardon from destruction targeted people and businesses, as well as information about individuals from the underground with funds blocked due to money laundering. ΒΙRD has already reported that Euroto kept secret documents related to Razmig Chakaryan - Ami. One such is found in the archive: a signal from SANS that on February 8, 2019, Ami's company attempted to withdraw the amount of 2.2 million euros in cash. In May 2022, BIRD revealed that the same company owns the land of the "golden parking lot" of Kapitan Andreevo- "Progressive Building 2016".
Inspections, files, reports
The archive, which is believed to be Petrov's, contains a voluminous array of documents from the General Directorate of the “National Police" (GDNP). Among them are reports from inspections - for example, for "operational information on excess of rights" by the director of the State Fund "Agriculture", related to a large public procurement, or for "illegal appropriation and disposal of assets", acquired with a loan from Corpbank from a well-known gas company.
Among the documents is a three-page list with names, personal identification numbers and amounts against each of them. According to BOEC, six people on this list are managers at the "Customs" Agency, and the total amount reaches nearly 1.3 million leva.
But that's not all. The archive contains protocols from the State Gambling Commission, which mention political leaders, as well as curious documents such as the autobiography of an employee of the State Gambling Commission, a report on a doctor sending large sums of money to Lebanon, investigations against mayors, inspections ordered by the National Security Council of Bulgarian arms dealers, including those related to a large-scale deal for the army...
There is even a list of companies located on the territory of the 8th Regional Directorate of the State Security Service, which covers Druzhba, Tsarigradski Complex, Abdovitsa, Dimitar Milenkov, Busmantsi and the adjacent villages.
And the "golden passports" were among Petrov's interests
The interests of Petyo Petrov - the Euro, who took over the leadership of the capital's investigation in 2013 and resigned two years later, follow the path of money. The archive shows that they also included candidates for "golden passports" - Bulgarian citizenship against investment.
Among the documents is an opinion signed by several lawyers who insist that the regime should not be terminated because of the benefits for Bulgaria and provide data that by 2018, 50 foreigners had received Bulgarian citizenship against investment, and over 300 - the right of residence. The names of the 50 foreigners in question with the file numbers are on a separate list, and some of them had their citizenship revoked later due to lack of investment.
After pressure from Brussels and Washington, in March 2022, the parliament changed the law and ended the possibility of acquiring Bulgarian citizenship against investment. However, the oligarch from the MRF Delyan Peevski was sanctioned by the United States under the global "Magnitsky" law and for participating in abuses under this scheme.
Who's calling him?
However, whatever Petyo Evroto's archive contains - the one in BOETS and BIRD or the other, carefully stored in the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office - the state prosecution stubbornly refuses to read it. Even less to investigate its own people, as well as the senior police officers, businessmen, customs officers, state and municipal officials mentioned therein.
A few days ago, the Sofia City Court failed for the second time to move forward with the case against Petyo Petrov, accused of fraud over over 35 kilograms of gold - part of the "Eight Dwarfs" affair. Initially, the gold (coins and bars) was seized as material evidence, but then disappeared because prosecutors "mistakenly" returned it… but not the owner.
It seems that the Bulgarian judiciary is doomed to smell like the kitchen of the "Eight Dwarfs" restaurant. And the Euro? Unknown and undetectable to the Bulgarian services, but… he picks up the phone. The cyber group BG ELVES has established that he is online. Who is calling him…