China's top political advisory body started its annual session on Thursday afternoon in Beijing, Xinhua reported. The opening of the annual session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference begins after a two-month delay because of the coronavirus spread that originated in the central city of Wuhan late last year

The man of the communist State Security, former diplomat and taskforce agent for all kinds of dirty commissions, Ilian Vassilev, aka agent Sasho or agent Dragan, has again released a “hot” statement into the public space.

The Anti-Corruption Commission for Illegal Assets Forfeiture (ACCIAF) has decided to file an illegal assets forfeiture claim with the Sofia City Court (SCC) against Ivo Prokopiev and Galya Prokopieva to the tune of BGN 451,476.59. The claim concerns potential forfeiture of cash and shares, including such acquired in the US, Germany, Japan and Luxembourg, the ACCIAF announced.

Do you remember The Matrix, the hit film that at the turn of the 21st century showed a dystopian world in which people can be held captives? The first installment in the series came out in 1999 – by that year, former PM Ivan Kostov, the godfather of Bulgaria’s murky privatisation process, had already created his first oligarchs. In the real world, he had laid the foundations of a parallel state that would become his mechanism of controlling the behind-the-scenes clique for years to come. And that has continued to this day even though lack of voter support got him out of politics nearly two decades ago.

Within less than four years, BGN 8m have flown into the cashbox of the allegedly independent station bTV thanks to a scandalous contract with the state-owned company Bulgarian Sports Totalisator (BST) for buying airtime and broadcasting the Sports Toto programme. A journalistic inquiry of Blitz found out that the abovementioned contract was signed in September 2016 but without a tender, as loophole in the law - namely in the Public Procurement Act (PPA) - was used which presents a possibility for contractors not to apply PPA provisions when concluding contracts with the providers of media services.  

NGOs affiliated with the indicted oligarch Ivo Prokopiev are going to distribute the money that the government has earmarked for promoting civil society and funding projects of significance for society as a whole. This is made obvious by the list of 14 organisations that are going to be represented on the new Council for the Development of Civil Society.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has gone beyond its competence with its ruling on the case of Kolevs vs Bulgaria, convicting Bulgaria. On the basis of the ruling, the Strasbourg court, about which a little more than a month ago a French NGO warned that it was controlled by billionaire speculator George Soros, requires Bulgaria to change its constitutional law with regards to its prosecution. The reason is that this way there will be a possibility for introducing criminal sanctions for the Prosecutor General if the latter commits a crime. However, such decision is beyond the competence of ECHR, PIK Agency states in its inquiry.

The godfather of the mafia-style privatisation in Bulgaria, Ivan Kostov, crawled out from his private chamber to join yet another battle of the state against the behind-the-scenes clique. And he - quite expectedly - took the side of the shadowy clique.

One of Bulgaria's national TV stations got caught in a real oligarchic cobweb. Three oligarchs at odds with the justice system managed to spread their tentacles, reaching deep into it: Vasil Bozhkov, charged with inflicting damages to the state treasury to the tune of BGN 700m, indicted fugitive banker Tsvetan Vassilev, and Ivo Prokopiev - an oligarch with two pending cases indicted for privatisation-related affairs.

The Supreme Bar Council (SBC), which has ties to the behind-the-scenes circles and serves the interests of the oligarchy, has challenged the last amendments to the Bank Insolvency Act that were initiated back in 2015 and give legal recourse to the CorpBank bankruptcy administrators to return to its insolvency estate property acquired with the lender's money. The SBC has requested that the constitutionality of the entire package of amendments commonly known as “the 2018 Peevski amendment for CorpBank” be reviewed.