Well-known Bulgarian lawyer Menko Menkov, who represents former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and some of his cabinet members, owns an offshore named Sageweld Ltd. And registered in the Seychelles, the Pandora Papers reveal. He became the owner of the company in 2015. This offshore company has no activity in Bulgaria, a check in the Commercial Register showed.

Menkov was likely nervous about being the registered official owner of the company because in 2017 he transferred his shares to a person from Mahe in the Seychelles named Molly Rita Roselie. In order to maintain control over the company’s assets, a general power of attorney was issued in Menkov’s name, allowing him to operate with the company’s bank accounts as well.

Molly Rita Roselie is listed in the Bulgarian Commercial Register as the owner of dozens of offshore companies. She is obviously not a real owner and the documents in Menkov’s case confirm it. Formally, this is declaring false information in the Commercial Register, but the Registry Agency seems not to be able to establish these facts.

A BIRD.bg reporter tried to reach Menko Menkov for comment but he did not answer his phone and did not reply to text messages. In recent days, his name has been mentioned in the media over a scandal with 450 kilograms of liquid amphetamine seized at Sofia Airport. It turned out that the recipient of the illicit substance is a partner with Menkov in the company DDLS-Biosim .

Menko Menkov is a criminal lawyer who defended former Interior Minister and former second in command in Borisov’s Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party Tsvetan Tsvetanov. Menkov currently accompanies Borisov and two other former Ministers, Petya Avramova and Nikolay Nankov, to interrogations by the authorities.

It is not clear whether attorney Menkov holds the offshore company for himself or for the benefit of those whom he represents. Investigations by the site Bivol, based on documents from the Panama Papers, show that Sasho Angelov, the lawyer of controversial former Bulgarian lawmaker and media mogul Delyan Peevski is just the formal owner of offshore companies which are actually operating in the latter’s economic interests.

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.

ICIJ has obtained more than 11.9 million financial records, containing 2.94 terabytes of leaked confidential information from these offshore service providers. For nearly two years, ICIJ organized and led an investigation that grew to encompass more than 600 journalists in 117 countries and territories. This is the ICIJ’s largest ever investigation on the offshore world unlocks financial secrets of politicians, billionaires and the global elite

ICIJ shared the Papers with 150 media partners, launching the broadest collaboration in journalism history. Their publications began on October 3. They reveal the secret deals and hidden assets of more than 330 politicians and high-level public officials in more than 90 countries and territories, including 35 country leaders.

Globally, the amounts hidden in offshore destinations, for which data are available in the Pandora Papers, are estimated at several trillion US dollars. In the Bulgarian segment there are data for large-scale damage to Bulgarian taxpayers worth at least BGN 1 billion.

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