BIRD’s revelations about politicians’ properties. And how we make them

Over the years, BIRD has uncovered dubious property affairs of politicians of all colors. Usually we are talking about the so-called. simulated transactions, when the price of the property according to documents is suspiciously low. This raises questions about tax avoidance, income evasion and money laundering. Other signs of irregularities are a quickly paid mortgage, unrealistic parameters of a bank loan, transactions with persons from the criminal contingent and profitable deals with persons whose business depends on the state. The term “simulated deal” was coined by former Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov in 2012, when the website Bivol revealed how his wife had acquired orchards at a price 100 times lower than the market price. In 2019, the Apartmentgate scandal erupted, which started from the property of Tsvetan Tsvetanov. Then it turned out that a large number of politicians from GERB, but not only, have acquired properties at prices that are not affordable for the common people. BIRD is an investigative media with a focus on data journalism. At the heart of our investigations into real estate is the database of declarations of political persons and, more generally, all persons in high state positions /LVDD/. The sources of this data have changed over the years. The declarations of all political persons were in the National Audit Office, but subsequently transferred to the Anti-Corruption Commission, and those of the magistrates to the ISJC. In addition, there is a statute of limitations and after 10 years the declarations are not maintained online. For the purposes of journalistic investigations, we keep all LVDD declarations, including those that are no longer online. We have also prepared a search engine that allows us to quickly find a politician and all his declarations by keywords. We can, for example, subtract all those who have declared a terrace, or a Maserati, or a property in Greece. The search engine is publicly available in our public scanner. It is a normal procedure to check what MPs have declared after parliamentary elections, as well as members of each new government. If we detect oddities, we start a detailed check in the Commercial Register and the Property Register. Inquiries in the Commercial Register are free of charge, but in the Property Register one lev is paid for each reference – for a person, a company, a property or a transaction. Sometimes we have to make dozens of references to assemble the full picture. We check for properties of both the politician himself and his companies and his relatives and their companies. For some cases, it is necessary to go in person to the relevant branch of the Registry Agency in order to obtain the title deed. After identifying a property, we check the Cadastre for its location and cross the data with satellite data from Google Maps and Google Earth. If necessary, we visit the property and film it with a drone. Using this methodology, we revealed how Kostadin Kostadinov /Kopeikin/ from Vazrazhdane has paid off the loan of his house in Varna by express and has not declared an extension and a garage. We reached the apartment of the son of the MP from Vazrazhdane Tsoncho Ganev, bought without a mortgage loan.

We revealed how the young gerber Georg Georgiev built a house with a loan that covers half of its value. We have identified cheaply acquired properties of the wife of presidential adviser Koprinkov (former mayor from BSP), We have revealed that Deputy Speaker of Parliament Rositsa Kirova from GERB is in real estate deals with Taki’s mafia. We showed the cheap property of Vanya Grigorova – a candidate for mayor of Sofia, supported by the BSP. Our latest revelations about the properties of Assen Vassilev and Daniel Lorer from We Continue the Change are a continuation of this routine journalistic activity. We apply this methodology not only to properties in Bulgaria. BIRD has also built a database of properties owned by companies in France. Thus, we found out that former Bulgarian politicians have acquired attractive properties there. The database for France is actively used by dozens of investigative journalists from all over the world. OCCRP’s major international investigation Russian Assets Tracker, winner of the 2023 European Press Award, also uses this database to track the properties of Russian oligarchs in France. The full list of investigations into the properties of politicians can be found on this page. Apart from this are the investigations into the properties of magistrates, who also have a flair for buying cheap. One of them is Acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov, but his predecessors Ivan Geshev and Sotir Tsatsarov, as well as the former heads of the KPKONPI Plamen Georgiev and Anton Slavchev, also became famous for cheap properties. This largely explains the reluctance of law enforcement agencies to deal with the dubious property acquisitions of those in power. https://bird.bg/tollpass-queen-millions-ctw-lorer/ https://bird.bg/georg-lozen/ https://bird.bg/terziev-grigorova-ataki/ https://bird.bg/vazrazhdane-tsoncho-silvia-silvestar/ https://bird.bg/vazrazhdane-kostadinov/ https://bird.bg/koprinkov-millionaires-2/ https://bird.bg/taki-kirova-neighbours/

На прощаване: 84 годишният баща на Каракачанов построи 350 кв.м. вила в Тревненския балкан

***

Разследващата журналистика е разузнаването на гражданите. BIRD се финансира от дарения. Ние не публикуваме реклами. Не получаваме държавни субсидии. Не разчитаме на грантове. Финансирането чрез малки дарения от читатели е гаранция за нашата независимост. Включете се, за да продължим да разкриваме злоупотреби и да държим отговорни властимащите. Използваме Вашите пари за хонорари на журналистите, командировки, изграждане и поддръжка на нашите информационни системи, такси за фирмени и имотни регистри у нас и по света, придобиване на техника и специално оборудване, осигуряване на нашата безопасност и други важни работни мисии. Важно: Ако дарявате всеки месец това ще ни даде възможност да планираме и организираме нашата работа. Благодарим Ви! Нас ни има, защото Вас Ви има!

This post is also available in: Български (Bulgarian)