Cigarette smuggler from Bulgartabac brought clients of the “Eight Dwarfs” criminal group

The SIC OC group member Bozhidar Stoitsev and the owner of Nadezhda Hospital Ivan Stamenov took the businessman Iliya Zlatanov to the power broker Petyo “The Euro” to solve his business problem through the Prosecutor’s Office. They received a commission for their services, and Zlatanov was not their only “client”, he said in a video interview with BRRD.

Bozhidar Stoitsev was a guard of the slain underground boss Milcho Bonev AKA Bai Mile, one of the key people in the SIC criminal group. He lives with Iva Panagonova, the sister of Silvia Panagonova, with whom Bai Mile has a child, Zlatanov said. According to him, Stoitsev was engaged in usury and arranged the ransoms for cars stolen from the car Svetoslav Petkov – Lioness.

A BRRD reporter contacted Stoitsev by phone, but he declined to comment on this information.

Data on the proximity of Stoitsev and the family of Bai Mile are found in the Property Register. In 2017, Stoitsev sold to Milcho Milchev Bonev – the son of Bai Mile, an apartment in Sunny Beach. On the same day – April 28, 2017, a donation from Silvia Panagonova was registered for Stoitsev’s daughter, who is also named Silvia. As a result of the donation, the young Stoitseva, who was then only 11 years old, acquired an apartment on Simeonovsko Shose.

As evidenced by the Commercial Register, Stoitsev and Iva Panagonova were partners in the company “Yukon-05” from 2005 to 2011, when Panagonova sold her shares. The company is engaged in forwarding and tourist activities, but has not filed annual financial statements since 2011. The same is true of the company.”Agro Industry Invest“, in which Stoitsev is a partner with two German citizens. These are the only two companies in which Stoitsev participates, and there is no evidence that he has been insured on the payroll in other companies.

Ivan Stamenov – from accused of cigarette smuggling from Bulgartabac to hospital boss with offshore money

The second person quoted by Iliya Zlatanov is Ivan Stamenov Stamenov with the nickname “The Fat Man”. He has a large-scale business in Bulgaria, financed by offshore companies. With money from offshore companies, he built the Nadezhda Women’s Health Hospital.

But before embarking on the health business, Stamenov was involved in cigarette smuggling schemes. His name appeared as a defendant in a 2007 investigation by the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office for cigarette smuggling from Bulgartabac and money laundering (e.g. 6030/07).

The investigation became known because of the scandal with the dismissal of Delyan Peevski, who was Deputy Minister of State Policy in Disasters and Accidents. Peevski was accused of blackmailing the head of Bulgartabac, Hristo Lachev.

Then the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office uncovered large-scale smuggling of cigarettes from the brand “Prestige” to the Middle East through the offshore “Caledon Invest”. The registered in the United States “Caledon Invest” was named after Chavdar Stoyanov, close to Ivan Stamenov Stamenov. Both were charged as defendants. The documents in the case reveal that Stamenov and the former head of Bulgartabac Hristo Lachev worked in tandem.

The defendant Stamenov testified before the prosecutors that all documents for the export of cigarettes were formed by Bulgartabac, but claimed that he did not know who had registered Caledon Invest and who was its real owner. That is why the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office sends a court order to the United States to reveal the real owner, sending detailed information about the case in the accompanying documentation. The investigative site Bivol was the first to search for and publish these court documents, which are public in the United States.

At the same time as the investigation in Bulgaria was ongoing, Caledon Invest was an official partner of smuggler Salam Quader Faraj, also known as Mullah Omar. At the time, he was an exclusive distributor for the Prestige, Victory and MM brands for Iraq and the Middle East. Faraj retains his partnership with Bulgartabac after the state-owned company was sold to offshore companies associated with lawmaker and media mogul Delyan Peevski. Between 2012 and 2016, the smuggling of Bulgarian cigarettes to the Middle East unfolded to record levels that alarmed Turkish services and provoked their angry reaction, reflected in several reports sent to Interpol.

It is also not known what response was received from the US authorities to the request of the Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office from 2007. It is clear, however, that the case for the smuggling of “Caledon” with the participation of Stamenov and Lachev is covered and does not reach sentences. Moreover, the file itself mysteriously disappears from the registry system of the prosecutor’s office.

The scandal with Peevski in 2007 shows that he wanted a share of Bulgartabac’s smuggling channels, controlled by Lachev.

“The only pressure exerted on me was by the former Deputy Minister of State Policy in Disasters and Accidents Delyan Peevski and by Angel Alexandrov,” Lachev said at the time.

It is not clear whether Stamenov was involved in Peevski’s alleged blackmail of Lachev at the time, but he was certainly a central figure in the scheme. The other accused Chavdar Stoyanov is actually just Stamenov’s driver and his strawman.

It is difficult to accept that Stamenov’s presence in the smuggling scheme of Caledon – Bulgartabac in 2007 and years later in the scandal “The Eight Dwarfs” is the result of chance.

It is hardly accidental that in 2007, along with the “blackmailer” Peevski, the then head of the National Assembly, Angel Alexandrov, was quoted, and in 2019, in front of the Euro’s cabinet, in Zlatanov’s words, the current head of the National Assembly Borislav Sarafov was on duty.

The connecting figure between these events is Delyan Peevski. According to Iliya Zlatanov, quoted by the Anti-Corruption Fund, it was Peevski who was the main beneficiary of Petyo’s Euro group’s raiding schemes and was supposed to acquire its assets.

Ivan Stamenov is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Nadezhda Investment – the majority shareholder in Nadezhda Hospital for Women’s Health with 97.99%. “Nadezhda Investment” is owned by “Nadezhda Reproductive Investment” EOOD, which in turn is owned by “Nadezhda Investor” EOOD. The last company belongs to Ivan Stamenov’s brother – Dr. Georgi Stamenov.

But before Nadezhda Investment (and through it Georgi Stamenov) entered the hospital as an owner, the majority owner was the company Iva Properties EOOD, which in turn is owned by the joint-stock company IBG Holding AD. Its actual owner is Ivan Stamenov.

BRRD tried to contact Ivan Stamenov for comment through the management of Nadezhda Hospital. They replied that they had forwarded our inquiry to Stamenov, but no feedback was received until the editorial conclusion of the article.

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