Tag games. This seems to be the slogan of the latest campaign that is being conducted by the oligarchs and their Fake News Factory media against our publisher, MP Delyan Peevski.

The shadowy power players in Bulgaria have shown yet again that their shamelessness knows no bounds. This time, in order to concoct the latest fake news against our publisher, MP Delyan Peevski, the oligarchs and their media of the Fake News Factory went to the absurd extreme of tampering with PM Boyko Borissov’s interview on bTV’s Slavi Trifonov Show aired on Wednesday night. Obviously they count on people not having watched the show.

The Fake News Factory made a surprising tactical move and literally took out of mothballs former constitutional judge Rumen Nenkov to show him in a primetime talk show of one of the most popular national TV channels.

The positive Brussels report, which brought the best possible news for our country last week, i.e. the end in sight to the CVM monitoring of Bulgaria, coupled with the promulgation of the media act amendments aimed at introducing transparency into media ownership and funding in the country, served as a thorn in the side of the behind-the-scenes clique and the publications it sponsors.

The amendments to the Media Act aimed at ensuring full transparency of all media financing sources voted in Parliament provoked an outcry among the Bulgarian oligarchy and its public spokespersons. This time, however, their vehement reaction helped tear the masks off those who only pretend to be journalists and showed their true nature of mouthpieces transmitting the talking points of their behind-the-scene mentors.

The disinformation campaigns carried out by fugitive banker Tsvetan Vassilev, responsible for the embezzlement of over BGN 4bn from CorpBank, and his paid puppets from the website Frognews, owned by former State Security agent Ognyan Stefanov (who operated under the alias Academician), have reached new geopolitical heights in their fabrications regarding the Global Magnitsky Act case.

After failing to push on the public the false truth that he is not an oligarch but is innocent as lamb publisher Ivo Prokopiev resorted to his favourite protection – help from abroad. The ‘pardon’ came in the form of unprecedented letter, an attempt to exert pressure on the state institutions, judicial power and publishers in Bulgaria which expose the shady affairs of the oligarch and his cronies.   

What do a young chess champion and our publisher, MP Delyan Peevski have in common? Do not rush to say “nothing” or dismiss the entire notion with the wave of a hand. The thousands of internet trolls laboring 24/7 in service of their shadowy masters obviously view the matter differently.

Capital Weekly, the flagship of the Fake News Factory coordinated by the oligarch Ivo Prokopiev, has produced yet another manipulation targeting our publisher Delyan Peevski. This time, it insinuates that Peevski wants to control phone tapping, a presumption solely based on the allegation that “Ilko Zhelyazkov, a person close to the MP” is among the candidates for a seat in the Special Intelligence Means Bureau. This fable might be new, but the fake news recipe it follows is old.

Following the avalanche of fake news that the oligarchy unleashed on the public in a desperate attempt to downplay the latest arrests and indictments in its ranks stemming from a series of privatisation scams that defrauded Bulgarian citizens, the behind-the-scenes clique published an entire print issue of fake news.