Maria Kalenderska, a former journalist, political activist and wife of former Bulgarian politician and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Nikolay Barekov, has been owner of the offshore company Sirius Investing, the Pandora Papers reveal. Kalenderska had to declare this property to the Committee for Combatting Corruption and the withdrawal of illegally acquired property (KPKONPI) (sic) as a member of the leadership of a political party, but had failed to do so. Nikolay Barekov also had to declare this family property but had not listed Kalenderska’s hidden assets in his declarations to KPKONPI or the European Parliament.

Sirius Investing is linked to the ownership of the company Investitsiya.BG (Investment.BG), which became infamous because of Barekov’s house in the affluent Sofia suburb of Dragalevtsi. On December 12, 2013, the company acquired the property for BGN 977,915. The owners of Investitsiya.BG at that time were Magdalina Hristova, Tina Vesselinova and Ivanka Nedelcheva.

The origin of the funds “invested” by the three young ladies is a mystery. Later, Magdalena Hristova became a member of the governing board of Barekov’s party “Bulgaria without Censorship”, and Ivanka Nedelcheva acted as his personal PR.

In the spring of 2014, news broke that the property is the home of the leader of the party “Bulgaria Without Censorship” and former director of TV7 Nikolay Barekov. He then told the media that he was paying a rent of EUR 1,000 a month for the house. This was followed by the collapse of Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB) and the public learning about the massive financing of TV7 and “Bulgaria without Censorship” by the same bank.

The offshore from the British Virgin Islands Sirius Investing was established on October 9, 2014. On October 28, 2014, it acquired the shares of Investitsiya.BG. The transfer of the assets of Investitsiya.BG to Sirius Investing took place two months before the property in Dragalevtsi was foreclosed by the National Revenue Agency, which became a fact on December 23, 2014. The foreclosure was lifted on April 13, 2016.

The information available in the Pandora Papers shows that as of 2016, Maria Kalenderska was the beneficial owner of Sirius Investing Limited but there is no trace of such ownership in the Bulgarian Commercial Register. There, the registered company owner is the fiduciary company “Multiservice Limited” and it remained such until 2019.

Sirius Investing held the shares of Investitsiya.BG until May 28, 2019, when it transferred them to Maria Oleva Kalenderska. The reason for this change of ownership is probably related to the deadline for declaring the beneficial owners of offshore companies in the Commercial Register. According to the Anti-Money Laundering Measures Act, this should have happened before May 31, 2019.

Meanwhile, while she was the owner of Sirius Investing, Kalenderska became the life partner of former MEP Nikolay Barekov, from whom she has children. This mandates him to declare his wife’s assets as well, but Sirius Investing is not found in any of his property declarations to KPKONPI.

BIRD approached Maria Kalenderska by phone and asked about the ownership of the offshore company Sirius Investing and why it had not been declared by her or her husband in the course of many years. Kalenderska asked for time to gather documents about the case and show them to one of our reporters, requesting a personal meeting. Such a meeting did not take place, as Barekov’s wife stopped answering our calls.

After the publication, Maria Kalenderska reacted through her Facebook profile. In her comment , she does not deny that she was the owner of the offshore company but claims that her and her companies do not have bank accounts abroad:

“My position:

My companies and I do not have bank accounts abroad. Neither now nor in the past.

Respectively, we do not have transfers from Bulgaria to foreign countries and from abroad to Bulgaria.

We also have no property abroad.

We have no loans from Bulgarian or foreign banks.

All our bank accounts have been declared to the Bulgarian authorities.”

This position does not refute the allegations of her ownership in Sirius Investing and its absence in the declarations to KPCOMPI.

Pandora Papers – politicians and their relatives

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. Trident Trust and Alfa Consulting, which registered Felina and Verum respectively, are among them. But the data show that other companies also work with Bulgarian clients. The previous major leak, known as the Panama Papers, contained files 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 files 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.

Current and former leaders who have owned secret companies and trusts, as revealed by the Pandora Papers investigation, include King Abdullah II of Jordan, the prime ministers of Côte d’Ivoire and the Czech Republic, the presidents of Ecuador, Kenya and Gabon and the former presidents of El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay and Honduras, the former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and many others.

BIRD.BG is a partner of ICIJ in the investigation and examines the information about nearly 200 persons with Bulgarian citizenship or living in Bulgaria, who appear in the Pandora Papers. They include two politicians, Delyan Peevski and Nikolay Mladenov. 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 example of Barekov and his wife indicates that there are relatives or proxies of politicians among the nearly 200 Bulgarians with offshore companies in the Pandora Papers.

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.

Ако считате, че този безплатен ресурс е полезен, включете се с малка сума за неговата поддръжка. При възможност, станете наш редовен спомоществовател с опцията Месечно дарение. Това ни помага да предвиждаме бъдещи разходи и да планираме дейността си за месеци напред.

***

За да научавате преди всички за нови разследвания, инсталирайте си нашето мобилно приложение: