A new owner has been presented to the journalists from Bulgarian TV7 – US citizen Jack Hanick has represented the investor, Capital daily writes in his most recent issue. Bivol confirmed this information from an independent source.
Hanick is officially presenting himself as a former producer of the US television Fox News and a current one of the Russian TV channel Tsarygrad TV. His mission in Sofia is to represent the interests of the Russian Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, who is included in the list of people sanctioned by the United States and the European Union.
Malofeev earned the inclusion in the list because of his closeness to Putin. He is his “busboy” for special orders and finances the extreme reactionary Orthodox TV Tsarygrad TV. This channel advocates vehemently the Russian military aggression against Ukraine.
It disseminates “Great Russia” propaganda at such level and with such intensity that it makes the Bulgarian nationalist Alpha TV look like the Disney channel. The former employee of Fox is now a fierce advocate of the Orthodox Eurasian ideology of Dugin, which is the basis of Putin’s project to conquer territories and orbits of influence.
Emissary Hanick is connected with the American evangelical conservative circles that are recruited through the conservative Orthodox KGB route. The American earned the trust of his new owners with statements in the Russian State Duma in support of anti-gay laws, but in Bulgaria he is only a “Trojan Horse” of Malofeev, whose list of contributions to Putin’s regime is impressive.
“The Godly oligarch” Malofeev, the likely future owner of TV7, had debt of 225 million US dollars to VTB. The Bank sued him and sealed an agreement to terminate the process: But the case is not closed yet, likely to hold Malofeev under control.
Despite these tensions with the financial arm of the regime, Malofeev is still a highly trusted person and has collected 10.6% of the shares of Rostelekom (the telecom operator of the government and military connection). In 2013, he resold the shares to another faithful to Putin oligarch – A. Rotenberg.
In 2014, Malofeev organized a congress of nationalist parties in Europe. Bulgaria was represented by the always willing to do anything against some rubles Volen Siderov. The Orthodox oligarch also played a role in the recruitment of the new Greek Minister of Defense, and he is developing the theme parks Tsarygrad together with the French nationalist Philippe de Villiers.
But all of the above is nothing compared to Malofeev’s role in the Ukrainian conflict. The Oligarch is not only a former employer of two of the terrorists from Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, Igor Girkin and Alexander Boroday, but he is also among the initiators of the proposal and justification for the annexation of Eastern Ukraine, “submitted” in the Kremlin in early 2015.
Surely, if the former partner of VTB sells TV7 to Malofeev, it will become a clone of the Russian Orthodox propaganda channel Tsarygrad TV, part of the arsenal of Putin’s hybrid war against the European civilization. And there will be no one to stop him, despite the sanctions, because officially all will go through the plausible American and a cascade of offshore companies, concealing the real ownership.
Similarly, the prosecuted majority shareholder of the collapsed Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB), Tsvetan Vasilev, is currently hidden behind the ownership of TV7. The man, who inherited the “Bank of the KGB” in Bulgaria and then skillfully drained it, would hardly be so stubborn not to sell the television, if such is the plan of his Russian mentors, unless he has decided to end at once both his financial problems and his problems with justice.
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