A BG Media Guidebook for US Congressmen

• A republican who has voted against USA sanctions against Russia is the author of the anti-Geshev letter
• Tsvetan Vassilev and Ivo Prokopiev stand behind the serial compromising attack with an overseas flavor

Foreigners don’t have it easy with us either. Not to mention the Americans. We may have been Euro-Atlantic partners for decades, but US citizens continue to find it difficult to navigate the thickets of their native Balkan mentality. Evidence bol. The last one – from the eve of Christmas.

In the pre-holiday commotion, while we stormed the stores, an American congressman also stormed into the Bulgarian news space with an act of supposed concern.

Republican House of Representatives member Warren Davidson sent a letter to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requesting action against Attorney General Ivan Geshev for “refusal to prosecute” Bulgarian public figures sanctioned under Magnitsky.

According to Davidson, this directly threatened the stability and security of European allies within NATO and aimed to undermine the Global Magnitsky Act.

In fact, the letter attacks not only the chief prosecutor, but also the panels of the Supreme Administrative Court, which in several consecutive decisions ruled that the Bulgarian lists under “Magnitsky” are unconstitutional and violate Bulgarian law and European directives.

There is not a word in Davidson’s creation about the fact that the European Commission itself has repeatedly emphasized that the Magnitsky sanctions cannot be applied within the EU. However, another important fact is not mentioned – that the Bulgarian state prosecution launched investigations against all persons who were sanctioned by the US under the Global Law, but some of these proceedings – such as the one against DPS deputy Delyan Peevski, were terminated due to the lack of any evidence of an offense or crime having been committed. Peevski himself, however, is currently suing in the US against the sanctions imposed on him, since the US authorities themselves have never disclosed evidence supporting the claims on the basis of which he was included in the “Magnitsky” list.

It is expected that it will be revealed in the course of the case that there is no such evidence, and that the sanctions themselves have come about because of a defamation campaign conducted under the baton of the “Capital” circle of the energy and media oligarch Ivo Prokopiev. A smear campaign based on slander and manipulation that we seem to be witnessing right now. Although this time it was inspired by another oligarch – fugitive banker Tsvetan Vassilev, but again conducted in our country with the assistance of Prokopiev.

Although unknown to Bulgaria, the author of the letter – Congressman Warren Davidson – gained dubious fame in the US media this spring after it became clear that he was among only 39 of all 398 members of the House of Representatives. which are not included in the Kremlin’s ban list created after the imposition of US sanctions against Moscow. The special publication The Hill, which follows the work of congressmen, pointed out that he is also the only Republican not on the sanctions list, while at the same time he voted against the request to investigate Russia for war crimes over its invasion of Ukraine.

These facts cast a thick Russian shadow over his name, which is now deepening given the fact that his letter is full not of concrete evidence, but of painfully familiar props and claims spread by politicians and media under the control of the oligarchs Vassilev and Prokopiev, notorious for their Kremlin connections.

A whole series of facts point to the fact that it is Tsvetan Vassilev who is behind the letter, which was popularized on the eve of the holidays in Bulgaria with the cooperation of publications and proxies in the NGO sector and the politics of the “Capital” circle. Already five years ago, it became clear that the fugitive banker was working through American lobbyists to discredit the Bulgarian state prosecution before the US authorities. In 2017, he hired the American law firm Jefferson Waterman International for a hefty fee of 50,000 per month (about BGN 1.1 million per year) to lobby in his favor before the legislative and executive authorities in the United States. Former US Senator Bill Richardson was brought in to help his action at that time to exonerate himself for the robbery of the billions from KTB and to provoke the imposition of sanctions against his enemies in our country.

However, his attempts to lie to the American authorities failed miserably, after first the financial guru Steve Hanke, and then the investigative office AlixPartners and the Arbitration Court of the World Bank in Washington stated that KTB was turned into a financial pyramid by Tsvetan Vasilev , who drained more than BGN 5 billion from it, opening an unsalvageable abyss in the treasury.

Now the fugitive banker has apparently decided to do a remake, this time involving a current congressman in his lobbying campaign, without even trying to hide his role – he took to social media to brag about Davidson’s letter, strongly emphasizing that he supports exactly his claims . This is how he became one of the first to spread the letter in his post, together with another messenger – the deputy from “We continue the change” Ivan Hristanov, a prominent member of Prokopiev’s proxy party in power – PP, and also part of the closest circle of its co-presidents Kiril Petkov and Asen Vassilev.

Whether Tsvetan Vassilev’s current experience will lead to a different result than that of 2017 remains to be seen, but overall the outcome seems just as doomed to failure. Moreover, the letter is entirely based on lies and manipulative publications distributed by journalists and NGO activists, all connected to Vasilev and Prokopiev’s manipulation network. Such as, for example, euractiv.com, written off by close associates of the “Capital” circle Georgi Gotev, the Bulgarian section of “Free Europe”, always occupied by former cadres of the same circle, as well as BIRD.bg of the prominent worker and “pen for hire” and of Vassilev, and Prokopiev, and also a Russian son-in-law – Atanas Chobanov. In their attempt to “bleed” the US congressman’s letter, however, his hidden instigators “improved” the situation to such an extent that it also cited the “death threat”, a warning about which Chobanov claimed to have received from an employee of the American embassy in us. The case caused an unprecedented diplomatic scandal in Bulgaria, after it became clear that the Russian son-in-law Chobanov had illegally and without warning him recorded footage of the diplomatic mission and led to a protest position from the US embassy.

Whether Davidson knew all of these key details before writing the letter or simply signed off on something created by a specific lobbying firm at dictation is a matter of heightened difficulty. However, it is advisable for both the Bulgarian and the American authorities to be aware of all the key details before taking important actions. Especially at a time when

Russian propaganda undermines the foundations of democratic societies precisely with kompromat of this type, moreover, made under the baton of a person like Tsvetan Vassilev, whose connections with the Russian oligarch “dirty orders” of the Kremlin, Konstantin Malofeev, are world-famous and proven by dozens of facts. It was Vasilev and Malofeev who were among the main actors in the espionage scandal that broke out in 2019, in which it emerged that the fugitive banker had helped the Russian oligarch to seize assets from KTB, through which he would reverse Bulgaria’s geopolitical orientation from Euro-Atlantic country in a satellite of Moscow.

The coup plan, however, was revealed by the now attacked chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev, like Malofeev and he was banned from entering Bulgaria together with o.z. General of the Russian GRU Leonid Reshetnikov. However, the fugitive banker was far from the only oligarch who supported Malofeev’s crimes. He was also given a media platform for his pro-Russian propaganda by energy boss Ivo Prokopiev, whose flagship Capital was the only Bulgarian media outlet allowed into the headquarters of the Kremlin’s “procurement boy” to publish an exclusive interview with him, in which Malofeev spoke at length extensively explained his plans for the construction of the Belene and South Stream NPPs in Bulgaria. All projects, the main lobbyist of which was Tsvetan Vassilev in our country.

In April 2022, the US Attorney General indicted Malofeev for circumventing sanctions against Russia and himself and for using accomplices to covertly acquire media in the Balkans, including Bulgaria (note his attempt to hand of the KTB-financed with the direct assistance of Tsvetan Vasilev TV7). In December, the American prosecutor’s office officially requested the confiscation of 5.4 million dollars from the Russian oligarch’s bank account in the United States.

Against this background, it is particularly logical that the attention of the US authorities should also be directed to the other oligarchs who assisted Malofeev in his subversive activities in the Balkans and in Bulgaria in particular. And no matter how much Tsvetan Vassilev and Ivo Prokopiev try to cover their tracks by sewing up their Russian affiliations and undermining the law of other people, the neon label glows in a signal Kremlin red.