Two offshore companies from the British Virgin Islands became the property of Irena Krasteva in 2009. Their registration was ordered by a Swiss bank. The purpose of the operation is to open bank accounts in the name of a legal entity, thus hiding their real owner – the mother of former MP and media mogul Delyan Peevski.
The two companies are Hintas Holding & Finance S.A. and Sarit Partners Corp., which are registered in advance with offshore service provider Triden Trust. RBS Coutts Bank in Zurich approached Trident Trust on 9 April 2009 to form their property in the name of Irena Angelova Krasteva. The purpose of the acquisition of both companies is explicitly stated: “To hold account with RBS Coutts Bank Ltd., Zurich”. The Trident Trust bills its services to the bank $1,700, and annual registration support is $550.
In the set of documents there is a list of the subscribed shares of the companies, both of which are Irena Angelova Krasteva. A copy of her passport is also attached.
The name of the banker Fortunat Huber, who certified the copy of Krasteva’s passport, is impressive. The same person emerges from earlier revelations of Bivol as a registrar of offshore companies from the same bank in favor of trade union leader Konstantin Trenchev. Huber also appeared in a Capital investigation into Tzvetan Vassilev’s offshore holdings. Most likely, we are talking about Vassilev’s personal Swiss banker, who at that time had excellent relations with Delyan Peevski and financed his mother’s media.
In the Pandora Files there is no data on the accounts opened in the name of the offshore companies and the balances on them. But without a doubt, this is a financial operation aimed at hiding the real owner of the money in Switzerland. In fact, the bank is engaged in the entire process of acquiring the offshore company, shaping it in the name of the client as beneficiary and opening an account in the name of the untraceable company from BVI.
This type of banking service, an offshore account, raises many questions of compatibility with anti-money laundering legislation, but data from the Pandora Files and earlier from the Panama Papers indicate that it was common practice in Switzerland and other tax havens.
RBS Coutts is a Swiss subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the oldest and most respected financial institutions in the world, servicing the accounts of the British crown. But it is the Swiss branch that provides services to wealthy “wealth management” clients that has been embroiled in scandals and investigated in the United States and Germany for money laundering and tax avoidance assistance. In 2015, RBS sold Coutts to Swiss bank Union Bancaire Privée.
The BRRD sent questions to UBP and RBS whether the accounts of these companies are active and in which bank they are currently in. We also asked whether these companies and accounts are related to financial transactions of Delyan Peevski, who has been sanctioned by the US authorities for “significant corruption”. In the questions we also pointed out that Peevski’s mother Irena Krasteva is included in the Bulgarian list “Magnitsky”.
RBS said it did not provide information about its customers. UBP’s press service replied that it had no comment on the specific case, but strictly complied with all regulatory requirements. Only part of Coutts International’s customer base was acquired in the deal, not the entire customer portfolio of the company. But the specific question whether the accounts of Krasteva’s offshore companies are currently in UBP was not answered.
Irena Krasteva is known as a former boss of the sports totalizator, who in 2007 acquired Petyo Blaskov’s press group with a multimillion-dollar loan from CCB, and subsequently bought other print media, the printing complex “Rodina”, as well as distribution companies. The acquisitions are estimated at several tens of millions of leva. For many years, lawmaker Delyan Peevski was not in the ownership of the media, but it was an open secret that he personally controlled the content of newspapers, which had a clear editorial line to support those in power and to denigrate opposition figures, civic activists and critical journalists.
It was not until 2014 that Peevski spoke about “my family’s media”, and a year later Irena Krasteva partially transferred ownership to him. After that, Krasteva gradually withdrew from the companies, and Delyan Peevski’s media empire grew with unofficial control over Channel 3 television and information sites with tan content. The result of this takeover of the media environment in Bulgaria was Bulgaria’s drastic decline in the media freedom charts, with Peevski explicitly cited by Reporters Without Borders as the main culprit for the sinking. A year ago, he got rid of ownership of his media in a dubious deal with United Group, which he bought Vivacom, Nova TV and it is unclear why Peevski’s newspapers.
In the documents from the Pandora Files, three companies related to Peevski are found, which he as a member of parliament has not declared. In a statement to the media, Peevski denied any irregularities, but the revelations provoked an institutional reaction from the NRA and KPKONPI, which launched inspections. Today, the former MP appeared for questioning at the State Agency for National Security (DANS) and promised the journalists waiting for him to appear more often in public, but on his way out of the agency he refused to answer questions about his offshore companies.
So far, Peevski has been repeatedly inspected on various signals from the prosecutor’s office, but without any consequences. In April 2021, the US administration blacklisted Peevski for participating in corruption schemes. The Bulgarian authorities created a separate list of Magnitski, which included partners and relatives of Peevski, including Irena Krasteva, but not his trusted lawyer Alexander Angelov, who received ownership of the offshore companies from Peevski. The former lawmaker is challenging the sanctions, and the MRF party continues to defend him publicly before Bulgarian and European institutions, claiming that there is no evidence that he is involved in corruption.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists ICIJ included Delyan Peevski in the list of 300 influential people illuminated in the Pandora Files. His profile states that he is an oligarch, a former lawmaker and media mogul sanctioned by the United States for corruption. Bivol’s investigation is cited, according to which Peevski is considered the visible symbol and the embodiment of the “Deep State” in Bulgaria, as a frontman of former officers and agents from the State Security close to the parties MRF and BSP, who govern behind the scenes and control huge assets.
The Pandora files of ICIJ and partners are based on 11.9 million files of corporate, financial and personal information about offshore owners that have been leaked from the secret brokers in question. For months, more than 600 journalists from 117 countries have been studying this information, implicating the world’s elite in asset concealment. This is the largest global journalistic investigation to date.
Publications in more than 150 media outlets around the world began on Oct. 3 and reveal secret deals and hidden assets of more than 330 politicians and high-ranking government officials, including 35 state leaders from more than 90 countries and territories.
Among the current and former leaders illuminated by the investigation are King Abdullah II of Jordan, the prime ministers of Côte d’Ivoire and the Czech Republic, the presidents of Ukraine, Ecuador, Kenya and Gabon, close to President Putin, former presidents of El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay and Honduras, former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and many others.
BIRD.BG is ICIJ’s partner in the investigation and examines the information about nearly 200 persons with Bulgarian citizenship or living in Bulgaria that appear in the Pandora-Files. Among them are two politicians, one of whom is Peevski, big financiers, lawyers, individuals associated with multimillion-dollar fraudulent schemes, but also entrepreneurs with regular business and no visible political protections, who have registered offshore companies and announced them to the Bulgarian authorities.
Globally, the amounts hidden in offshore destinations for which data are available in the Pandora Files are estimated at several trillion dollars. In the Bulgarian segment, data are available for large-scale detriment of Bulgarian taxpayers by at least BGN 1 billion.
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