“...They have enough money. Today, they give money to someone to vote for Denkov, tomorrow they give the same person money to vote for you. They just give the number, and that's it…”
This horrifying statement is part of yet another secretly recorded conversation between Kiril Petkov, Asen Vasilev, Hristo Ivanov, and Atanas Atanasov, in which the "Brotherhood of the Honest," as PP-DB call themselves, plan to buy and pay for votes in cash to secure their favor. The words are uttered by none other than the person who was until recently directly responsible for personnel appointments in the security agencies - Atanas Atanasov.
Two weeks before the upcoming extraordinary parliamentary elections and the regular European elections in Bulgaria, unprecedented scandalous audio materials were released to the public. These recordings reveal Petkov, along with his alleged intimate friend Lena Borislavova, former finance minister Vasilev, former prime minister Nikolay Denkov, and the leaders of "Democratic Bulgaria," Hristo Ivanov and Atanas Atanasov, arranging illegal financing for their election campaign. It is claimed that the recordings were made by Alexey Petrov, who was assassinated less than a year ago. Petrov was a former special forces officer, businessman with a shady past and controversial reputation, and was recently described as the "ideological father" of the "Change" movement and the "godfather" of the Denkov cabinet. Whether he kept these recordings to hold leverage over the protagonists in this story is a topic that will continue to develop.
More importantly, the public has been made aware of the severe dependencies of "We Continue the Change" and "Democratic Bulgaria" on individuals with criminal backgrounds, people who have been investigated and imprisoned, brokers of bought votes, and a whole array of dubious figures. It is thanks to their money that these two parties can pay for political advertising on the largest national television channels, rent thousands of billboards across the country, and pay polling agencies to manipulate preliminary surveys.
From what was heard, it is clear that for Kiril Petkov, it does not matter if the money officially comes in as donations. On the contrary, he prefers "if there is cash in bags... the question is whether there is cash at all." The conversation also includes his frankly comical musings that he "did not know" the party had "cash." This is confirmed by the treasurer of "Change" and his co-chairman Asen Vasilev, who is adamant that there is cash, but it cannot be officially declared to enter the accounts of major media and polling agencies. To make matters even more absurd and tragic, Lena Borislavova, alleged to be Kiril Petkov's mistress, suggests a scheme for "laundering" the illegal funds. According to her idea, each member of PP who receives a high income would have to fictitiously donate 10,000 BGN from their salary and later receive the same amount in cash from the black fund. Classic money laundering!
One of the people responsible for the contributions is the oligarch Plamen Bobokov, who was arrested in the summer of 2020 for crimes on a particularly large scale. Petkov calls him with a request to find another "one and a half million" to go towards advertising.
Political and financial analysts have commented that the "cash" from the black fund of "We Continue the Change" is unlikely to have gone solely to media. This is the least likely scenario since advertising contracts are formalized through banking channels. According to Grigor Zdravkov, chairman of the Bulgarian Anti-Mafia Legion, the bundles of cash from the bags were most likely intended for direct vote-buying. For those unfamiliar, we should clarify that this involves financing a dense and well-organized broker network in each of Bulgaria's 26 regions, consisting of "lieutenants," "sergeants," and "captains" - entirely following a mafia model. Each of them is tasked with bringing between 100 and 1,000 voters to the polls, who are pre-paid between 50 and 200 BGN, depending on the area where they vote. In some places, the stakes rise to 500 BGN per vote, especially in strategic municipalities with significant interests. It is needless to mention that the organizers of this electoral trade are usually criminal elements - most often drug dealers, loan sharks, pimps, and organizers of smuggling channels, who will be further discussed in this material.
To avoid being accused of spreading conspiracy theories, and at the risk of repeating ourselves, we will again quote the words of former National Security Service chief Atanas Atanasov from the latest recording, which should be read again, this time in the context of what has just been said: “...They have enough money. Today they give money to the person to vote for Denkov, tomorrow they give the same person to vote for you. They just give the number and that’s it…”
The elephant in the room, which no one addressed after the release of the recordings, is who the financial donors of "We Continue the Change" and "Democratic Bulgaria" are. The only name that surfaced was that of Plamen Bobokov, who has been arrested and imprisoned, but it would be naive not to consider Petkov and Vasilev’s admissions about "cash" in light of another major scandal that erupted in the final days of the now-dissolved National Assembly. On April 3rd of this year, DANS (State Agency for National Security) arrested the notorious underground figures Stefan and Marin Dimitrov, known as “the Yars,” for large-scale cigarette smuggling. Photos showed them carrying bundles of hundreds of thousands of euros to the home of former "Change" MP Boyko Rashkov. Rashkov, seen in photos with them alongside the highest-ranking professional in the Ministry of Interior - Chief Secretary Zhivko Kotsev, revealed quite close ties with the smuggling family. It naturally followed that the patrons of the smuggling operation were none other than the bosses of "We Continue the Change." Whether this is true remains for the prosecution and court to confirm. Media published photos of trucks packed with master boxes of illegal cigarettes. Directly responsible for these shipments to European capitals was Petya Bankova, appointed by Asen Vasilev as head of the Customs Agency, who is currently also under arrest.
Those who view cigarette smuggling merely as a domestic issue or a tool for rearranging criminal businesses need to be informed that Bulgaria ranks in the top 10 European countries supplying illegal tobacco products to the continent. We are talking about millions of packs of cigarettes produced without any control, from low-quality and health-hazardous tobacco. These packs, according to international studies, enter at least one in twenty European homes and, besides causing fiscal damage, have lasting harmful effects on the health and lives of smokers.
To stay within context, it is not an exaggeration to say that in their quest to "have cash" for the elections, the leaders of PP-DB, including Kiril Petkov, Asen Vasilev, Hristo Ivanov, Atanas Atanasov, along with Nikolay Denkov, Lena Borislavova, Boyko Rashkov, bear direct responsibility for Bulgaria being a leading poisoner of European citizens and a leader in the illegal trade of tobacco products. To buy elections in Bulgaria, PP-DB are not only damaging the Bulgarian budget but also that of the EU. Now they are preparing to give us "more of the same" by buying the 2-in-1 elections on June 9 using the same scheme.
The distribution of cash has already become evident with the tasteless billboards with which the "good forces" have polluted the urban environment and the even cheaper banner cartoons they paid tens of thousands of euros for online.
You will understand the mechanism for controlling the security services and institutions, through which the main financial flows pass, and how falsifying official documents hits Bulgarians in the pocket, in the next material on the topic.
Source: crimesbg.com
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