Documents from the global journalistic investigation The Pandora Papers reveal offshore connections of 68 companies in Bulgaria that have accumulated a total of BGN 164 million in debts to the National Revenue Agency (NRA). Over time, some of the liabilities have been written off and the current debt of these companies to the Treasury has dropped to BGN 148 million. The list of companies can be found here.

The search engine of BIRD.BG found eight of these companies among the ones whose debts worth BGN 3 billion were written off in October 2020. The written off debts of these eight companies amount to BGN 8.5 million. This practice continued during the term of the caretaker government. In June 2021, and most recently in September 2021, the NRA removed from the lists of debtors two more companies related to persons with offshore companies from the Pandora Papers, one with BGN 6 million in liabilities and the other with over BGN 0.5 million.

Some of the offshore owners had been owners or managers of the debtor companies and had transferred them to straw people, most often poor and destitute from whom the State cannot collect debts, therefore they are written off by prescription. Among the owners of offshore companies there are also the so-called professional “debt cleaners” for whom journalistic investigations have been conducted more than once over the years. Others have been on the boards or proxies of the debtor companies. Currently some of these companies are in the process of liquidation or have already been liquidated, others have no assets and the collection of their debts will be almost impossible. However, there are also 11 companies with assets on which a collateral has been imposed. They can be found in the detailed list here by what is noted in the second column as with collateral (“с обезпечение”).

BIRD.BG is a partner of ICIJ in the Pandora Papers investigation and examines the information about nearly 200 persons with Bulgarian citizenship or living in Bulgaria, who appear in the Pandora Papers. They include politicians, Delyan Peevski, Nikolay Mladenov and Nikolay Barekov and Arben Havalyov. In addition to them, there are big financiers, lawyers, people involved in multimillion-dollar fraud schemes, but also entrepreneurs with legitimate business and no visible political protections, who have registered offshore companies and have declared them before the Bulgarian authorities.

BIRD.BG has already unveiled the secret offshore companies of the majority shareholders in First Investment Bank Tseko Minev and Ivaylo Mutafchiev, who over the years have received loans of over BGN 1 billion from their own bank. Their offshore companies have also been used in schemes to racketeer business people with Delyan Peevski being the ultimate beneficiary.

The Pandora Papers contain confidential information from 14 offshore service providers, the so-called Secrecy Brokers, enterprises that set up and manage shell companies and trusts in tax havens around the globe. The previous major leak, known as the Panama Papers, contained Papers from only one company – the now-liquidated Mossack Fonseca & Co.

After the outbreak of the Pandora Papers scandal, several Bulgarian institutions, including the NRA, promised to investigate offshore owners, but the only publicly known action so far is the summoning of Delyan Peevski to the National Security Agency.

It is noteworthy that the Bulgarian “Magnitsky” blacklist, prepared by the Ministry of Finance, has not yet been expanded to include Peevski’s newly emerged from the Pandora Papers offshore companies. Attorney Alexander Angelov, to whom Peevski transferred two offshore companies, is not included as well.

This publication gives publicity to the companies indebted to the NRA and does not aim to disclose the links and announce the names of individuals, but BIRD.BG has this information. The revelations will continue and some of them will be included in future publications.

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