On December 6, 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) updated its Pandora Papers database by publishing information on the beneficial owners of more than 15,000 offshore companies, foundations, trusts, and other entities from the investigation with the same name.

There are dozens of Bulgarians among them. Bulgaria’s offshore companies are registered in the British Virgin Islands. The new names include a coordinator of the political party There Is Such a People, businessmen associated with notorious groups from the period after the fall of the Communist regime, bankers, lawyers of famous entrepreneurs and even a distributor of Belarusian vodka in Russia, registered at a Sofia Municipality address, showed an investigation by BIRD.BG.

One of the intriguing new names is that of Ignat Sergiev Chakarov, born in 1946, who in the ICIJ database is linked to the offshore companies MINYON HOLDINGS LIMITED and GAIL Invest Limited. Soon after the fall of the Communist regime in the distant 1989, Chakarov registered the joint-stock company Invest Group AD in the Orbita Hotel, office 415, together with Krassimir Georgiev. A year later, the company Alfa-93 OOD of Stoil Slavov, founder of the 1990’s organized crime group SIC, and Bozhidar Brusev (former head of the Territory Directorate of the State Reserve in Sofia) were registered in the same office in the Orbita Hotel. Other prominent partners of Chakarov in those years had been Nikolai Valkanov of the Ministry of Construction and the son of communist leader Stanko Todorov. However, Ignat Chakarov is connected with more than one offshore company, BIRD’s investigation showed, and at least one of them is active in Russia as well. Our attempt to reach Ignat Chakarov through his son, who owns an IT company in the United States, failed.

Petar Ignatov, born in 1959, who has Bulgarian and Russian citizenship, is another interesting figure. He is a former partner of arms dealer Dobrin Ivanov in the DP company, linked to the interests of controversial lawmaker and former media mogul Delyan Peevski in the Dunarit affair. Ignatov is found in the Pandora Papers as owner of the offshore companies MEXFORD ENTERPRISES LIMITED, I&P LIMITED, BASSMORE LIMITED and CS Construction Solutions International Ltd. Dobrin Ivanov is also the owner of Bulgarian TV Europe, seen as the mouthpiece of the formerly ruling Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party. Another ICIJ investigation called FinCen Files revealed that Transmobile, an arms company owned by Dobrin Ivanov, had received large sums of money from an offshore company involved in money laundering through the Magnitsky scheme.

The coordinator of the political party There Is Such a People in Cyprus Dimo Marinov Mladenov is also in the Pandora Papers with his company MARCELL OVERSEAS LIMITED, registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2014. Dimo ​​Marinov did not answer our email request to explain the purpose of this offshore company.

Lawyer Yavor Nedev Kamburov is the owner of TRANS STOCK INVESTMENT LTD, registered in the British Virgin Islands by Alcogal. Until April 22, 2016, TRANS STOCK INVESTMENT was the owner of TULEX ESTATE EOOD, whose procurator was Yavor Kamburov. The same company appeared earlier in the Panama Papers. Kamburov is on the Management Board of EUROPEAN RETAIL INVESTMENT SA, sole owner of AP Mart EAD, whose procurators since July 21, 2014, are Angel Ivanov Angelov (the Gradus group) and Petar Tsvetanov Dudolenski. AP Mart EAD is the sole owner of PICCADILLY with over BGN 22 million in liabilities to the National Revenue Agency.

Ognyan Lyudmilov Tomov is the owner of OG CAPITAL LIMITED, registered in the British Virgin Islands by Fidelity, but no information about it is found in the Bulgarian Commercial Register. The actual owner of another offshore company, DARLISTON CONSULTANTS LIMITED from the British Virgin Islands, which owns the Bulgarian OG CAPITAL, of which Ognyan Tomov is a manager, has not been declared .

The member of the Board of Directors of the Rotary Club Bankya Lachezar Tsankov Krastev is connected with the offshore company TRADIS CONSULTING LIMITED. The chairman of this Rotary club (and a member of the Sofia club) is the former head of the Road Infrastructure Agency Svetoslav Glossov. Members also include the daughter and son of Svetoslav Glossov, Diana and Apostol Glossovi, who have arranged to implement a project worth over BGN 8 million under a contract assigned by Mayor Hassan Azis in the city of Kardzhali. The others in this tight-knit circle in the Sofia suburb of Bankya (home of former Prime Minister and GERB leader Boyko Borisov) do not seem to be accidental people either.

Evtim Stoychev Ormanov, a long-time staff member of First Investment Bank (FIB), former director of the FIB’s Liquidity Department, according to an investigation by Bivol, also has an offshore company named NYQUILLA DEVELOPMENTS LIMITED. It is connected with the scandalous deal for the now-closed Communist regime steel behemoth Kremikovtzi, financed with loans from FIB. The investigation showed that instead of repaying their loans, the borrowing companies granted multimillion loans to other offshore companies. One of them was Ormanov’s NYQUILLA. Another offshore company with a loan of EUR 15 million from FIB is FRIESIAN CONSULTANTS LIMITED, owned by Nikolay Binev, whose name is also published in the Pandora Papers.

Ironically, the Pandora Papers also contain the street address of the Sredets district of the Sofia Municipality, at which the Bulgarian of Moldovan origin Dmitri Todorov Gagauz is registered. He is the owner of the offshore company ADG Capital Ltd. and has indicated as his address 1000 Sofia, 6 Lege street. By law, Bulgarian citizens who do not have a permanent address in Bulgaria are registered by default in the Sredets district.

It turns out that Lege’s address can also serve as an address for offshore companies that run a multimillion-dollar alcohol business. In the above case, ADG Capital Ltd. is the owner of a Russian company, which together with the Belarusian holding “Minsk Crystal” sells Belarusian vodka in Russia and plans to expand to China and other markets, according to documents in the Pandora Papers. The young Gagauz with Bulgarian citizenship seems to be used as a straw man by the real owners.

As ICIJ emphasized, the new records were incorporated into the Offshore Leaks database and come from two offshore services providers: Panamanian law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee (Alcogal) and Fidelity Corporate Services, headquartered in the British Virgin Islands. According to the ICIJ, the new data added to the Offshore Leaks database represents only a fraction of the information available in the Pandora Papers leak.

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.

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