{"id":45500,"date":"2019-02-11T15:04:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T12:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bivol.bg\/?p=45500"},"modified":"2019-02-26T10:07:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T08:07:26","slug":"lawyer-of-controversial-mp-attacks-arms-business-after-novichok-like-poisoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bivol.bg\/en\/lawyer-of-controversial-mp-attacks-arms-business-after-novichok-like-poisoning.html","title":{"rendered":"LAWYER OF CONTROVERSIAL MP ATTACKS ARMS BUSINESS AFTER NOVICHOK-LIKE POISONING"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Attorney Alexander Angelov<\/strong> is the ultimate beneficial owner of the offshore \u201cViafot\u201d<\/strong> Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands. This offshore staged an attack on the business of the allegedly poisoned with a substance similar to #Novichok entrepreneur and arms dealer Emiliyan Gebrev<\/strong>. Nevertheless, Angelov, who is the son of a powerful officer from the sinister \u201cBulgarian KGB\u201d \u2013 the Communist regime\u2019s secret services \u2013 the State Security<\/strong> (\u201cDarzhavna Sigurnost\u201d or DS), turns out to be a much more important factor in the business empire of media mogul, controversial lawmaker from the party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) and short-lived Head of the National Security Agency (DANS), Delyan Peevski<\/strong>. Bivol was the first media to investigate and reveal that Angelov is the ultimate owner of “Viafot” (here<\/a>). According to the \u201cPanama Papers\u201d, to which journalists of Bivol received access under an agreement with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), attorney Angelov has also been the ultimate owner of Doreco Limited<\/strong>, registered in the British Virgin Islands. Its Bulgarian subsidiary, Doreco Commerce, was one of the key mechanisms for lending and transferring assets to strawmen in the business empire around Delyan Peevski<\/strong>. Thus, Angelov has controlled for many years<\/g> assets for hundreds of millions of dubious origin. It also emerges now that he is the person behind the legal and corporate attack on Gebrev, following the attempt to physically eliminate him by poisoning him with a banned substance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The War for\n“Dunarit”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the collapse of the Bulgarian private lender Corporate\nCommercial Bank (CCB), the arms factory \u201cDunarit\u201d remained part of the assets\nof CCB\u2019s majority shareholder – banker Tsvetan Vassilev – and became part of\nthe package of strategic Bulgarian enterprises sold to the Belgian citizen with\nRussian passport Pierre Louvrier<\/strong> for\nthe symbolic amount of BGN 1. Because of media and institutional pressure,\nLouvrier later dropped the deal. Then, the owner of EMCO Emiliyan Gebrev showed\ninterest in becoming a shareholder in “Dunarit<\/strong>“. According to the Bulgarian Capital<\/a><\/em>\nweekly, he started working on the deal about a month before he was poisoned,\nwhich means late March or early April 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An investigation by the site Bellingcat<\/em><\/strong>, together with\nthe Russian site The Insider<\/em><\/strong>,has \u201cdetermined\nthat a third Russian GRU officer, who was in the United Kingdom at the time of notorious\nNovichok poisoning attack in March 2018, arrived in Bulgaria just days before\nGebrev and his son became seriously ill after being poisoned with an\nunidentified substance\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bellingcat<\/em> has\nidentified the third man  – a 45-year-old\nRussian travelling under the alias Sergey\nVyacheslavovich Fedotov<\/strong> – as a senior GRU officer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn April 24, 2015, \u201cSergey Fedotov\u201d arrived on a flight\nfrom Moscow to the Bulgarian seaside resort of Burgas. He had a return flight\nfor a week later, on April 30, from the capital city of Sofia back to Moscow.\nHowever, he did not show up for the return flight. Instead, late on the evening\nof April 28th, he showed up at Istanbul\u2019s Ataturk airport and bought a\nlast-minute ticket to a flight to Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier that day, a Bulgarian entrepreneur, Emilian Gebrev,\nwas hospitalized after collapsing at a reception he was hosting in Sofia. At\naround the same time, his adult son and one of the executives at his company\nfell suddenly ill. All three were hospitalized with symptoms of severe\npoisoning. Emilian Gebrev\u2019s condition quickly deteriorated and he fell into a\ncoma. Doctors surmised that the poison had been applied or consumed in the day\nor days preceding April 28. However, as they could not identify the poison,\nthey could not be sure of its effects or mode of progression,\u201d writes Bellingcat.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Russian military intelligence officer, who acted as a\ndouble agent for the UK’s intelligence services, Segrei Scripal, and his adult\ndaughter Yuliya were poisoned with Novichok in Salisbury, England, in March\n2018. In September 2018, British authorities charged two Russian men with the\naliases of Aleksandr Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov with carrying out the poisoning.\nBellingcat<\/em> later identified the two\nas Aleksandr Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga, both of whom work for Russia’s GRU\nintelligence services.  \u201cSergey Fedotov\u201d is also suspected of being\ninvolved in the British attack, having arrived in Britain two days before the\nSkripals were poisoned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entire Bellingcat<\/em>\ninvestigation into the Bulgarian connection can be found HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Capital,\no<\/em>n the advice of the doctors, \u201cGebrev approached the two laboratories in\nEurope that could conduct more research and determine the exact type of poison.\nOne – the Swiss \u201cSpiez Laboratory\u201d (which conducted independent tests on Sergei\nScripal\u2019s poisoning with Novichok), refused. The other – at the Finnish\nInstitute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (VERIFIN),\nagreed. Bulgarian doctors sent samples to Helsinki and the lab sent its report\nin the second half of June 2015\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Capital<\/em>\u2019ssources, the report says that the\npoisoning may be due to a neuropathic agent or pesticides, but “no\nchemicals prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention” had been found in\nthe samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#WHO Profits?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gebrev, himself, is certain that the attempt to physically\neliminate him is related to his intentions to acquire “Dunarit” and\nis part of a scenario that involves taking hold of the key weapons facility at\nall and any cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“First they tried\nto eliminate me physically, then legally, and since last year, also\neconomically”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emiliyan Gebrev on\nbTV.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, several months after the unsuccessful murder attempt,\nthe offshore \u201cViafot\u201d launched a legal attack on Gebrev. At the end of 2015,\n\u201cViafot Investment Bulgaria\u201d bought from Italian businessman Edoardo Miroglio\nthrough a transfer (cession) the receivables (EUR 19 million) of his company\n\u201cE. Miroglio\u201d from \u201cDunarit\u201d. This happened after Miroglio “miraculously”\nsurvived a deadly car crash that occurred under suspicious circumstances. Thus,\n“Viafot” became a top contender to acquire “Dunarit”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to \u201cViafot\u2019s\u201d attempts to seize \u201cDunarit\u201d\nthrough court actions, State institutions attacked Gebrev’s business by\nwithdrawing his license. The Prosecutor’s Office recently joined the operation\nand accused Gebrev of money laundering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The physical\nassault on EMCO’s senior employees, including Emiliyan Gebrev and his family,\nthe attack on EMCO’s licenses and the attempts to steal the contracts in 2017,\nthe attacks against the ownership of \u201cDunarit\u201d through the use of the offshore\ncompany \u201cViafot\u201d by the Bulgarian authorities – these are just a small part of\na series of facts that in their totality outline a sinister play. The curtain\nis already rising and the actors are appearing on stage with their own\nnames,”<\/em> former Minister of Defense Boyko Noev<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this reason, the answer to the question #WHO is behind the offshore \u201cViafot\u201d<\/strong> is\nkey to the lifting of the curtain – both for revealing who wants a hold of\n\u201cDunarit\u201d and for the methods that include the first known attack with a poisonous\nsubstance in NATO and the European Union (EU).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peevski\u2019s trusted lawyer\nlurks behind \u201cViafot\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bivol revealed<\/a>\na month ago through the \u201cPanama Papers\u201d that lawyer. Alexander Angelov is the\nultimate owner of \u201cViafot\u201d. This extremely important fact was fully ignored by Bulgarian\n“media”, but not by renowned international publications such as Newsweek<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\n\nAttorney Alexander Paraskevov Angelov\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angelov is known as a very trusted person of MP Delyan Peevski<\/strong>, while the latter is\nconsidered to be the visible symbol and emanation of the \u201cDeep State\u201d in\nBulgaria. In addition to dealing with much of Peevski’s business affairs,\nAngelov has appeared in person on behalf of the MP in transactions directly\nrelated to him or to his cohorts. Businessmen have testified before Bivol about\nthe direct and indirect links between Peevski and Angelov in purchases and\nacquisitions of firms that had been incorporated by strawmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bivol further\nfound<\/a> that attorney Angelov is the son of an ex high-ranking State Security\nofficer, Paraskev Paraskevov<\/strong>, who is\nrepresenting Delyan Peevski in the United States after the former CCB majority\nshareholder Tsvetan Vassilev filed a complaint with the US Department\nof Justice<\/strong>, seeking protection under the \u201cGlobal Magnitsky Act<\/strong> \u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another attorney close to Peevski and a partner of Angelov\nis Geno Andreev, who is also a son of a senior State Security officer – the\nlate Rumen Andreev<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All known facts and circumstances indicate that Peevski is a\nfront of former State Security officers and agents, close to the DPS<\/strong> party and to the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP)<\/strong>, who\nare the backstage masterminds of the political processes and who dominate huge\nbusinesses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is this backstage rule that prompted the Spiegel magazine\u2019s\nanalytical article \u201cBulgarian\nPolitician Peevski – the Iceberg of Corruption<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"

Part of the backstage \u201cPeevski\u201d network, refined after the revelations about the offshore property of attorney Angelov <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The most recent and yet another proof of the above is the\ncomplaint filed in the United States<\/a> by victims of a theft of USD 65\nmillion from bank accounts in the collapsed CCB. The defendants include, among\nothers, Bulgarian bankers and majority shareholders in First Investment Bank\n(FIB or Fibank), Tseko Minev<\/strong> and Ivailo Mutafchiev <\/strong>(former State Security agent with the\ncodename \u201cKamen\u201d and nephew of communist dictator Todor Zhivkov), Delyan\nPeevski<\/strong>, the conservator of CCB Stanislav Lyutov, the Bulgarian central\nbank \u2013 Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), the\nRussian VTB<\/strong>, listed as the Bank for Foreign Trade of the Russian\nFederation, which has financed the privatization by Peevski\u2019s group of some of\nthe most lucrative Bulgarian State assets \u2013 \u201cVivacom\u201d and \u201cBulgatabac\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The role of VTB, also called the Bank of the Kremlin, is key in these\nprocesses<\/a> and proof of the warm connection between the Bulgarian oligarchic\ngroup controlled by former Communist secret services officers and their\n“Big Brother” in the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Doreco Limited\u2019: Large\npearl in the corpulent crown<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, \u201cViafot\u201d is just one of the mechanisms that had been used\nto seize the key arms business. This offshore had not been that significant for\nPeevski’s already established corporate network, which had been funded with\ncapital of dubious origin, associated with massive\nsmuggling of cigarettes in the Middle East<\/a>. Another offshore, however, which,\naccording to the \u201cPanama Papers\u201d, also belongs to Alexander Angelov, lifts the\ncurtain on a business for hundreds of millions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until now it was known that \u201cDoreco Limited\u201d is owned by a\nBahamian and Seychelles company, which in turn is owned by offshore\nregistration companies in Cyprus. On their part, the Cypriot owners of the\nregistration companies are professional strawmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexander Paraskevov\nAngelov<\/strong>, uniquely identified with a certified copy of his Bulgarian\npassport in a correspondence of the Mossack Fonseca law firm, is the real owner\nbehind this complex scheme stands, according to the \u201cPanama Papers\u201d published\nby the ICIJ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n