Company owned by GERB party spin doctor Harizanov pays BGN 416. rent to Sofia municipality for two-storey house

Neat two-storey house with total built-up area of 150 sq.m. in Sofia. You can rent it for a modest BGN 416. per month from Sofia Municipality. If you are well connected. This is how much the company “Best Brands” Ltd., which is the wife of the chief propagandist of GERB Georgi Harizanov, has been paying so much. The information about the price and the parameters of the contract were provided after an inquiry under the Access to Public Information Act (APIA) by the mayor of Krasna Polyana district. Harizanov himself and his wife live in an apartment for rent in a luxury building on the navel of Sofia, whose owner is an offshore company associated with TIM. The company of Harizanov’s wife is a partner of the Bulgarian branch of the offshore company.

Best Brands signed a contract with Sofia Municipality in 2013 for a period of five years with the possibility of extension, apparently benefiting from it because it is currently there. A check on real estate sites shows that the price paid by Best Brands is at least 5 times lower than the market price. For 200 euros in the area of ul. Metodi Kusevich in the Krasna Polyana district, where the municipal house is, at best you can rent an office with an area of 20 – 30 sq.m. no extras like yard and parking spaces.

Micro-enterprise with 10 workers and millions of turnover

Harizanov’s company is engaged in the production of advertising materials and has a modest capital of BGN 2. But this is not about an enterprise that needs state or municipal assistance. Officially, Best Brands is a micro-enterprise and on this basis it does not submit detailed annual financial statements, but only a balance sheet. The Daxi system shows that when it rents the house, Best Brands reports BGN 849,000. revenues from sales, and over the next few years it reaches almost BGN 2 million per year.

However, these good sales results are burdened with large debts – 1.5 million liabilities for 2019 are declared in the balance sheet published by the Commercial Register. This does not prevent Best Brands from maintaining a high standard visible on the company’s vehicles. Until 2018, she used a BMW X5, whose insurance premium equals half a year’s rent for the municipal property.

Harizanov and his wife live in an elite new block on ul. Hadji Dimitar on the navel of Sofia, where the tenants of an apartment of 100 sq. It is owned by Fertitron Bulgaria, which in turn is owned by Luxembourg’s Anko Lane. And it in turn is owned by the offshore from the British Virgin Islands Fertitron Inc. At the same time, Best Brands is a partner of Fertitron Bulgaria according to the company’s website.

Fertitron did not respond to emailed questions about exactly what their partnership with Harizanov was and what rent he was paying. On the phone, Hadji Dimitar’s office did not deny that they have partnership with Best Brands, but also did not confirm: “We have no right to give such information.”

Approached for comment, Harizanov denied that his wife’s company would partner with Fertitron. “I’ll call them to change the information on the site,” he promised. Harizanov confirmed that he lives at this address in “one apartment from a living room and a room”. He settled there after being in the Krasna Polyana area where he had lived earlier and “where our company is”, he was repeatedly subjected to aggression and his family was subjected to stress.

Not just any partner.

“Fertitron” is actually a company of the late Nikola Damyanov, known as the financial strategist of the Varna group TIM. He emigrated to Canada and became “Capitalist” under socialism as a select few – Ognyan Doynov, Georgi Naydenov – Texima and Lyudmil Dionysiev. Through them, State Security is driving the schemes to siphon billions to Western banks in order to return them to Bulgaria as investments in enterprises and real estate.

Damyanov arranged for TIM to purchase “Chimimport” and did not hide his praise for his protégés. “These are people who work in the most accurate way and no one stands behind them,” he said, quoted by Capital. Ivo Kamenov kindly returned the ball to him by paying tribute to him posthumously: “He was the best of socialism.”

The connection between TIM and the current government can be traced back to 1995, when Boyko Borisov and his business partner Rumen Nikolov – The Pasha sold to Ivo Kamenov the company “Theo International”. A few months before this deal, the boppers had broken into an illegal cigarette factory in Kraimorie in premises rented by Theo International. The case has been swept away by local anti-mafia officials, but media publications and records in the Commercial Register, published by Bivol, prove documentarily this characteristic of the mafia transition method of initial capital accumulation.

The name of Nikola Damyanov also appeared in the case against the Margins, who, according to the state prosecution, planned to kill him, together with General Lyuben Gotsev and smuggler Ivan Todorov – the Doctor. All three are dead today, with only the Doctor dying a violent death. After the death of Damyanov’s father, his business was inherited by his son Ventsislav Damyanov, who lives mainly abroad.

Asked if he knew Damyanov and knew who he was, Harizanov denied being close to him. “I just saw an ad, went to Fertitron’s office and rented the apartment,” he said. At the same time, the political technologist of GERB demonstrated awareness of the business of Ventsislav Damyanov and the timadzhiyski connections of his father. “He doesn’t sell, he has properties and he collects rents from them.”

Fertitron’s luxury building houses other elite tenants. For example, the British Embassy and the Representation of the Government of South Africa have rented large apartments of 250 sq. It is not clear how much Harizanov pays for his “living room and room” of 100 square meters, but the rent of the British is entered in a contract registered in the Commercial Register and amounts to nearly BGN 3,000. Monthly.

Power lives cheaply

The municipal building on ul. Metodi Kusevich could be a wonderful small kindergarten, instead of easing the company expenses of the party Gauleiter, who, according to the former deputy chairman of GERB Tsvetan Tsvetanov, is arranging the lists of the GERB party. There is no logical explanation why Sofia Municipality has made such a gesture to Harizanov, but this is certainly not the first case of a famous gerbardzhiya who took advantage of the generosity of the GERB-ruled capital.

A few years ago, Aspect and Bivol revealed that MEP Mariya Gabriel for years had been reviving a large municipal home in a new building for the symbolic rent of BGN 400. She explained that she used the apartment for “merchandising” because she had nowhere to put her luggage in Sofia. In the case of Gabriel, however, the property was rented out by a municipal company specifically created to conceal such shameful deals. And the company of Harizanov’s partner uses the privilege directly from Sofia Municipality.

Two years ago, the “Apartmentgate” scandal revealed the affinity of GERB’s cadres for cheap properties with prestigious locations. Apartments and terraces paid two or three times cheaper than market prices turned out to be acquired “by excavation” by friendly companies or through other cunning tricks in order not to polish undeclared and inexplicable income. Both then and now, with the example of the symbolic rent of municipal housing, it is quite obvious that these prices are not for everyone, but are received against certain commitments and services, which, however, turned out to be completely invisible to the prosecution.

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