Guards of concessionaire YULEN are harassing a team of German public broadcaster ARD, which filmed a report about Bulgaria’s Pirin National Park. They have forbidden them to shoot on camera the ski area as if it was private property. The boss of YULEN, Obreikov, has personally claimed that in order to take pictures or shot a film in the National Park, one needs permission from the concessionaire.

This can be seen and heard on the footage shot by Bivol in November last year. Soon, it will be broadcast to tens of millions of viewers in Germany. They and Europe will see once again the situation with law enforcement in the most corrupt country of the European Union. Despite texts in the Constitution and the fact that under the law the National Park “Pirin” cannot be privatized and is free for access for all citizens, in reality, it turns out that it is not.

Bivol revealed through several investigations that YULEN is owned by a destitute Cypriot, Georgios Georgiou, who serves as a dummy to the owner and majority shareholder in First Investment Bank (FIB or FIBANK), Tseko Minev. FIB is the main creditor of YULEN, indebted by over 90 million levs. In fact, this is a classic draining of the bank. Depositors’ money is invested in a chronically unprofitable ski resort.

The only way for YULEN to cover these losses is to fell the trees of the National Park and sell the wood!

This explains the constant pressure on the government to accept without environmental assessment the expansion of the ski area and practically legalize a massacre of the park.

Exploits of “the people from FIB” echo in Europe

The hidden owners of YULEN are Tseko Minev and the other FIB majority shareholder, Ivaylo Mutafchiev, known together as “the people from FIB”.

Through Cypriot offshore companies and dummy individuals “the people from FIB” control a versatile business, financed with the money of depositors in FIB. “Bulmarket“, whose tanks exploded in the village of Hitrino, is among their many companies.

Loans to the private business of “the people from FIB” with money from the Bank, were deemed troublesome by the European Commission which, in its latest report on macroeconomic imbalances in Bulgaria, points at FIB as systemic bank causing concern. The central bank – Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) and Bulgarian politicians have long been aware of what is happening in FIB and how it is being drained by its owners. The facts are listed in the BNB supervisory reports from 2011 and 2014. Nevertheless, the bank has repeatedly received State aid, part of which has been also drained into offshore accounts of “the people from FIB“, according to a decree of the prosecution, which Bivol has published.

Despite all the scandals surrounding them, “the people from FIB” do not have any problems with the law and law enforcement. After companies related to the controversial lawmaker and corpulent oligarch Delyan Peevski transferred in FIB loans for over 250 million levs, they now feel above the law. The impunity of Tseko Minev and Ivaylo Mutafchiev is also rooted in corruption and their relations with the judiciary and the government. In one of the recordings from the “Yaneva Gate” scandal, the close to them lawyer Momchil Mondeshki says that “the people from FIB” were very worried about the possible suspension of Vladimira Yaneva as President of the Sofia City Court (SCC) and were collecting money to save her.

Mila Georgieva, Tseko Minev and Ivaylo Mutafchiev

The conclusion, however, may come from Romania where there is no cover-up and impunity for Tseko and Ivaylo. There, FIB is involved in a major criminal scheme to rob 20 million euro from the Romanian poor. The indictment of the Romanian anticorruption prosecutors stipulates that the theft has occurred with the assistance of the Bank and has been carried by the crime group “The Killers” whose ringleader Mila Georgieva is particularly close with “the people from FIB”.

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