The website WikiLeaks published a report prepared by James Pardew, the former U.S. ambassador in Bulgaria. The report, dated July 7, 2005, gives an overview of organized crime structures in Bulgaria and international criminal groups with Bulgarian involvement. Almost all well-known Bulgarian businessmen who accumulated wealth during the transition period are present in the report: Grisha Ganchev (a major petrol importer and owner of Litex, the third largest Bulgarian football team), Vasil Bozhkov (billionaire, gambling mogul and owner of TSKA, one of the two biggest football teams in Bulgaria), Peter Mandjukov (publisher of Duma daily, the official media of the Bulgarian Socialist Party BSP, known for his arms trade deals in Russia and Ukraine), Valentin Zlatev (executive manager of LUKoil Bulgaria), Todor Batkov (president of Levski, one of the two biggest Bulgarian football clubs), Ilia Pavlov (president of Multigroup, the cornerstone of organized crime structures in Bulgaria, murdered in 2003), Georgi Iliev (owner of top Bulgarian football team Lokomotiv, who succeeded his brother Vassil Iliev in the mafia organization VIS, shot in 2005) and Slavi Binev (member of the European Parliament, famous politician from the nationalist party National Union Attack).* Pardew also refers to Prime Minister Boyko Borisov’s former business partners Rumen Nikolov Pashata and Aleksey Petrov.
It is rather noticeable that Pardew does not mention Boyko Borisov even once, although the account is crowded with names of people who were in close personal or business relations with him. The ambassador provides a brief analysis of the Ministry of the Interior’s policies and draws the conclusion that despite consistent pressure from the U.S. and the European Union, the Bulgarian government hasn’t done much to reduce the levels of organized crime — all that without mentioning even once the name of Boyko Borisov, who was chief secretary of the Bulgarian ministry of the interior at the time the report was written.
Besides, Pardew’s report includes plenty of well-known facts, for the most part published by our national media. The ambassador states that Ilia Pavlov and Emil Kyulev (owner of DZI, a leading Bulgarian state insurance company, known for his connection to Russian underworld, murdered in 2005) were the major contributors who financed the campaign of NDSV at its rise to power in 2001 (NDSV, The National Movement for Stability and Progress, is a Bulgarian party, led by Simeon Sakskoburggotski, the deposited Tsar of Bulgaria, in power from 2001 to 2005).
Pardew also points out that Ahmed Dogan, the leader of NDSV’s coalition partner Movement for Rights and Freedoms, doesn’t even try to hide his strong connections with Multigroup’s boss Ilia Pavlov. After NDSV won the elections in 2001, Sakskoburggotski appointed Boyko Borisov for chief secretary of the Bulgarian ministry of the interior with Dogan’s blessing. At the time, Prime Minister Borisov was not much more that a former SIK safeguard (SIK is an insurance and safeguard company created in the mid-‘90s by mafia structures seeking to make their activity legal and launder money).
The series of brazen assassinations of underground players from 2001 to 2005 are also mentioned in the report, followed by a comment that Bulgarian police failed to find any suspects. However, Pardew does not provide an opinion on what may be the reason for the Ministry of the Interior’s ineffectiveness.
The former ambassador also mentions the mafia rooted Nove Holding, VIS, SIK, TIM, MIG, Apollo and Balkan, but his analysis does not actually reveal any new or unknown information about their activity. There is nothing in this part of the report that hasn’t been published with the Bulgarian national media.
We could only assume why Ambassador Pardew never mentioned the 2005 Chief Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior Boyko Borisov. In all terms, though, it comes as a surprise that he disregarded the fact that one of the most popular politicians in the country, who was in charge of the fight against organized crime, had had business partners such as Aleksey Petrov and Rumen Nikolkov Pashata. Equally surprising is that, according to the report, the ambassador wasn’t aware of the partnership between Boyko Borisov and Valentin Zlatev. It has never been a secret that Borisov’s safeguard company Ipon used to provide services to LUKoil. It looks like James Pardew didn’t even know about the safeguard background of our current prime minister, who used to have close business relations with SIK — a company that is thoroughly examined in the ambassador’s report.
*Editor’s Note: All clarifications in parenthesis throughout the article are from the translator.
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