Official Confirmation: Bulgarian Govt “In the Dark” Regarding “Yulen’s” Owner Mind the horns!

There is no information in the Council of Ministers about the natural persons who are the owners of ski zone concessionaire “Yulen”. This was made clear from a response to a request for information under the Access to Public Information Act (APIA) by Bivol’s Editor-in-Chief Atanas Tchobanov.

On January 5, 2018, in an interview with Nova TV, a representative of “Yulen” said that all competent State institutions know who is the real owner of the concessionaire of the Bansko ski zone. According to him, Georgios Georgiou was only a titular owner, while the real owner has been duly declared to these institutions.

As it did not become clear what these institutions were, Bivol sent APIA inquiries to two apparently competent institutions: The Ministry of Environment and Waters (MOEWs), which is in charge of the Pirin National Park and the Council of Ministers, where the National Concession Register is kept. The MOEWs response is not yet available but the deadline for responding under APIA has not expired.

Nevertheless, since the Council of Ministers is indeed a competent concession institution, the conclusion is that the representative of concessionaire “Yulen” had not said the truth on TV.

Meanwhile, other organizations such as the Coalition “For Nature in Bulgaria” have asked the Speaker of the National Assembly (Parliament) Tsveta Karayancheva, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to officially declare who is the real owner of the Bansko ski zone. On January 16, they also sent an open letter to the central bank (Bulgarian National Bank, BNB) on the same issue.

The Coalition draws attention to the fact that “Yulen” is a borrower from a Bulgarian private bank (First Investment Bank – FIB or Fibank) and all his property is mortgaged in it. “The BNB should also be one of the institutions that are familiar with the real owner,” they wrote in the open letter to Governor Dimitar Radev.

Who controls and manages Yulen on paper?

As of June 29, 2017, “Yulen” had four shareholders: Pirin Tourist Ltd. with seven shares, Bansko Municipality with 9,177 shares, Alpenwald Tourist Bulgaria with 123 shares and the British Virgin Islands’ “T.A.K. Services Limited” with 67,163 shares. However, let’s see who is the owner the offshore company that controls “Yulen” entirely.

According to current entries in the Trade Register, “T.A.K. Services Limited” is the property of the Cypriot company “DUC Nominees”. “DUC” is owned by Cypriot citizen Georgios Georgiou with 999 shares and Eleni Elina with one share. Bivol updated this data with a check in the Cypriot Company Register, made on January 16.

DUC is one of the companies of the destitute Cypriot national Georgios Georgiou, through which he has received nearly BGN 1.2 billion in loans from FIB, as a large-scale investigation by Bivol revealed two years ago.

However, the names of the directors of “T.A.K. Services” – Romanian husband and wife, Bogdan Radu Iugulescu and Nicoleta Elena Iugulesku, lead to other companies through which the Bulgarian organized crime group known as “The Killers”, with Mila Georgieva as ringleader, has stolen EUR 26 million from the Romanian Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture with the help of FIB.

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