Bulgaria’s Interior Minister sends Parliament report on probes into Magnitsky Act-sanctioned individuals, including Peevski

Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev has sent the National Assembly a report on investigations by the General Directorate for Combating Organised Crime into individuals sanctioned under the US Magnitsky Act, the ministry said on July 10.

This is the latest development in a saga involving flights by Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) leader Delyan Peevski, who is sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act and by the UK for large-scale corruption.

The Interior Ministry said that the document was sent to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Mihaela Dotsova, in connection with requests from members of Parliament “to familiarise themselves with the available data on the verification of persons sanctioned under the global Magnitsky Act”.

The data provided does not prejudice further actions by law enforcement agencies, the ministry said.

Attached to the report is a printout from an international system that shows the reservation and flight data from the beginning of 2023 to June 2026 of a person for whom there have been signals received and checks are being carried out, the statement said, in an apparent reference to Peevski.

Demerdzhiev has alleged that former GERB-UDF parliamentary leader, Constitutional Court judge Dessislava Atanassova, had accompanied Peevski on a private charter flight to Dubai. Atanassova subsequently denied this, showing documentation that she said proved that Demerdzhiev’s allegation was untruthful.

On July 9, MRF MP Hamid Hamid requested assistance from Dotsova to obtain documents related to the leaked information about Peevski’s flights.

Hamid said that during his hearing in the House, Demerdzhiev had committed to providing all the documents on which his claims were based, but this had not been done.

According to Hamid, some of the information presented by Demerdzhiev had already been called into question by official data received from the Turkish authorities.

“We have requested the documents that the minister was referring to, but we have not received anything so far. We are concerned that action is being taken against these documents in the meantime,” Hamid said.

Demerdzhiev replied that the time that the General Directorate for Combating Organised Crime’s list would soon be presented to MPs.

“This way, each of you will be able to assess who these people are, what their connections are with Peevski, whether there is anything unhealthy in these connections, whether some of the people in question have participated in public procurement procedures, whether others are known to us from the Corpbank case, also called the Corpbank Affair, etc. The list will be accessible, so everyone will be able to draw their own conclusions,” Demerdzhiev said.

“Such people, who are sanctioned for ‘grand’ corruption, are included in this, I would call it, ‘shameful’ list, cannot corrupt entire countries, cannot build structures – sometimes legal, sometimes semi-legal, which structures practically in the shadows to govern the state. You remember the so-called Zhelyazkov cabinet, I call it the Peevski cabinet – the height of political audacity was to form something similar and thus sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act to govern an entire country in the European Union,” Demerdzhiev explained.

Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry said that Demerdzhiev is leaving for the US next week to participate in a forum at the invitation of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Demerdzhiev and Rubio are expected to have a bilateral meeting, with the Bulgarian minister also expecting to have bilateral meetings on the Magnitsky Act sanctions with the US Treasury Department.

Earlier, the ministry said that it was in contact with the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regarding potential circumvention of the sanctions imposed by it under the global Magnitsky Act in Bulgaria.

The letter to OFAC, signed by Demerdzhiev, said that in the course of various proceedings conducted by the ministry, data had been established that raise reasonable suspicions about assistance provided by legal entities and individuals to sanctioned persons to circumvent or limit the effect of the imposed sanctions.

“The available data indicates the possible use of related parties, commercial companies and other mechanisms through which the sanctioned persons continue to exercise de facto control over assets, business activities, financial flows, as well as the making of various payments,” the Interior Ministry said.

On July 3, Demerdzhiev alleged said that the April 2024 flight with Peevski and Atanassova was on the Malta-registered carrier Hyperion Aviation.

“This company is associated with a lady – Krassimira Kamenova, who has a child with Georgi Petrov Papazki, who is the brother of Walter Papazki,” Demerdzhiev said.

On July 8, Demerdzhiev said that it was being checked whether Peevski was the real owner of the aircraft on which Peevski frequently had flown and had sole use of.

Demerdzhiev said that he was not concerned about reports against him sent by the MRF for Europol and Interpol. The MRF has alleged that Demerdzhiev had violated the rules on Passenger Name Records (PNR).

“The signals from the MRF show something very clear – since they know from which systems information was obtained, they obviously know what information is in these systems, so I do not see these signals as something worrying for me,” Demerdzhiev said.

“They rather show that the people who ask have answers, and these answers are inconvenient. From there on, an attempt is made to shift the focus of this issue mainly to Ms. Atanasova,” he said.

He saidthat one side of the problem is who the people who accompanied Peevski on these flights are.

“This is not a matter of personal interest, but a matter of checking whether there is an unhealthy fusion between politicians, magistrates, business, something we call oligarchy, and something we are fighting against,” Demerdzhiev said.

“The second big part of this question is how a politician who started as a youth leader of the NMSP [former monarch Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s political party], was a deputy minister, was an MP, has huge financial resources to pay for over 180 flights by private jet. This is the big question,” Demerdzhiev said.

“How does a person sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act afford to pay for these flights, and here there is also interesting data.

“For example, whether the lawyer who accompanied him on these flights represented companies that acquired assets from Corpbank, and is there any connection between the payments to Peevski’s accounts for some of the flights and the acquisition of these assets. These are all serious questions that we will answer,” he said.

Meanwhile, MRF MP and former interior minister Kalin Stoyanov said that the Prosecutor’s Office had been notified of “information received” that in recent days, the Interior Ministry, State Agency for National Security and Border Police had been “taking steps to remove electronic data and system records that could be relevant to the investigation into alleged unlawful use of information from the PNR system”.

This system is used by partner services to verify which individuals are actually on board the various flights.

Stoyanov says that there is evidence that employees involved in the case were ordered not to comment on the topic, as well as to delete logs, journals and other system traces related to access to the PNR system and the accompanying information arrays.

“There is a real risk that evidence will be destroyed that could show the scale of possible abuses and identify those responsible,” Stoyanov said.

(Photo of Demerdzhiev: Interior Ministry)