Lidove noviny: No Negotiations between CEZ and Inercom since March Mind the horns!

There have been no new talks between CEZ and Inercom since March when Nicola Molčan (Molchan) was translating for Ginka Varbakova’s team in Prague, a CEZ spokesman has told Lidove noviny. The Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office has resumed the investigation into the murder of Czech citizen Libor Mirovsky, for which Nikola Molčan became a suspect in 2009. In April, it has asked the Prague Prosecutor’s Office for assistance in the interrogation of witnesses.

This transpires from an extensive article about Molčan and an interview with the sister of the murdered in Bulgaria, Libor Mirovsky, published in Lidove noviny on June 1, 2018. Petra Mirovska is a lawyer and has been investigating her brother’s death for years. It was precisely on her appeal that the criminal case was resumed.

The newspaper claims to have examined the evidence in the case, which was crushed in 2009 by the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office and Molčan was released from detention. However, Libor’s sister refuses to give up and continues to collect evidence about her brother’s murder. She has flooded the law enforcement authorities in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria with complaints. Due to her stubbornness, the case was relaunched in Bulgaria in 2015.

Molčan and Mirovsky have been friends and business partners. They have acquired land in the Sunny Beach resort and have started to build vacation houses. But their company soon faced financial problems and Molčan was removed as a partner, which led to a falling out in their relationship. In October 2008, Mirovsky flew to Bulgaria to sign under another bank loan. On October 17, he last talked to an acquaintance and then disappeared. On October 30, his body was discovered at the foot of the Vitosha mountain near the capital Sofia. Mirovsky has been shot dead with five bullets.

The investigation quickly uncovered peculiarities, such as the fact that Mirovsky has been registered in the Sofia Airport system for a flight to Frankfurt, but the airline has no data to of him being on the plane. On October 16, a business partner of the murder victim received a text message from his phone number, saying he will return and they will talk.

However, the police located the phone and unraveled the mystery. This happened after the admissions of Nikola Molčan’s driver, who testified that he had traveled to the Czech Republic at his boss’ request and had with him the SIM card of the murdered Mirovsky, as well as a new phone. There, he put the SIM card in the phone and sent the SMS in question, then discarded the phone. Police found the phone in a Prague canal by following the driver’s directions. They established that the IMEI phone number corresponded to the device registered by the mobile operator from which the SMS had been sent.

Despite this serious evidence against Molčan, the Bulgarian court released him from the arrest without any charges being pressed against him.

USB U-Turn

In 2011, Mirovsky’s sister received a USB stick in her mailbox. It contained recordings of conversations between Molčan and his driver Boyan. In them, one can hear how he orders his driver to send the text message and throw the phone into the canal. Everything in the recordings corresponded to the testimony of the driver before the Czech police.

Mirovska made certified translations of the recordings and sent them to the Bulgarian investigators. Nevertheless, the case was resumed only in 2015, and witnesses are currently being interrogated, says Petra Mirovska. She hopes that it will end up with Molčan’s being charged with her brother’s murder.

Nikola Molčan’s presence during the negotiations between CEZ and Ginka Varbakova’s Inercom proves that he has solid business contacts in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, Petra Mirovska believes. According to her, he has partnered with Czech entrepreneur Zdenek Zemek, who has previously funded solar park projects of Ginka Varbakova, and has also shown interest in the CEZ deal.

The Czech newspaper has approached Molčan’s attorneys in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria (attorney Menko Menkov), who have declined to comment.

Ginka’s negotiations with CEZ are at a dead end

“CEZ was supposed to check who was sitting at the negotiating table with them,” this is how Petra Mirovska comments on the reports that Nikola Molčan has been part of the negotiating team of Ginka Varbakova and Inercom. She reminds that the State-owned company has the opportunity to carry out its own investigation and due diligence, all the more so because this is a deal involving huge amounts of money.

CEZ spokesman Ladislav Kriz has told Lidove noviny that since March, when Molčan translated during the negotiations between Inercom and CEZ, there have been no direct talks with the Bulgarian company.

Ginka Varbakova flew for the March negotiations with CEZ in Prague after meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov at the Council of Ministers. He instructed her to convey the State’s intention to take part in the deal by which Inercom acquires the Bulgarian business of the Czech energy giant. Several weeks later, the State’s position made a U-turn and Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov said the State would not participate in the deal for CEZ’s Bulgarian assets.

Petar Lashov (left), Maya Hristova and Ginka Varbakova (right)

Lidove noviny also recalls the joint investigation with Bivol, which revealed that Molčan has a joint venture in the Czech Republic with Maya Hristova, who is close to Ginka Varbakova, and at the same time is a business partner with Petar Lashov, who is a card playing buddy of Boyko Borisov. There is also a hypothesis that Maya Hristova is the same Maya, who, according to judge Vladimira Yaneva in the recordings from the #Yanevagate scandal, has had an affair with Prime Minister Borisov and “half of Sofia knew about it”.

The above connection has remained outside the focus of media attention as well as the special parliamentary ad-hoc committee investigating the sale of CEZ’s Bulgarian assets.

The Committee’s report mentions the name of Nikola Molčan, for whom information has been requested from the National Security Agency (DANS) and the Prosecutor’s Office. However, the inquiries about Molčan have been classified in a “Confidential” appendix, and it is not even clear why they had been requested. The report does not include even a hint at his business connections and the trail leading to Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

As Bivol revealed, in the past Molčan had business relations with high-positioned people in the alleged powerful organized group in the 1990s – SIC – with which Boyko Borisov was also allegedly associated back then. These facts, however, remain a complete taboo for Bulgarian media.

Among them, only Mediapool, Sega daily, the independent online publication E-vestnik, the political talk shows of Vesselin Dremdzhiev on TV + and Ivo Bozhkov on Eurocom reported on the results of the investigation, establishing the relationship between Ginka Varbakova and Boyko Borisov, which passes through Nikola Molčan, Maya Hristova and Peter Lashov.

The fact that the site Club Z, which first revealed the participation of Nikola Molčan in Ginka Varbakova’s negotiating team, showed no interest in the subsequent revelations about that person is also indicative of the sensitivity of this information.