The Dark Pages in Peevski’s Dossier

The US State Department has detailed information marked “Secret”, on which its decision to include Delyan Peevski in the “Magnitsky” list is based. This is clear from the lawsuit that Peevski has filed in the United States, claiming that his sanctions be lifted. However, his chances are not great at all.

One of the pages with secret information about Peevski

A few days ago, BIRD was the first to announce the suspension of this production. A federal judge in Washington decides that it is necessary to wait for the Supreme Court to rule on a case that considers issues of a preliminary ruling on Peev’s case. Within 24 hours, the news was also covered by many other media. The “interpretation” of the news by a media outlet that according to documents has nothing to do with the former media mogul was also impressive – namely that this was “good news” for Peevski. This is absurd, but it is a sign of the remaining media influence of the MP. In parallel with this news, the plot of the shootout between MP Peevski and President Radev was developing, in which the two accused each other of corrupt practices. Peevski spoke vaguely about “darkness” and “cash” in the presidency, without providing evidence. Radev responded by recalling the international sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, to which Peevski was subjected by the United States and Great Britain. And in order to impose such sanctions, there is evidence and some of it can be seen in Peevski’s case against OFAC in the form of 14 “dark” pages marked “Secret”.

The evidence against Peevski

This classified evidence is available only to the judge – but not to Peevski and his lawyers. The doctrine that regulates this matter is called executive privilege – i.e. there are things that are the prerogative of the executive power only. Therefore, a judge who has a high level of access to classified information has the right to read classified materials – but not to provide them to the other party. After all, Peevski does not have any level of access, because he is just a nobody – he is not even an American citizen. The same applies to his expensive lawyers – they also have no right of access. This clarification is important because for a year and a half the elderly man has been pleading for full access to the evidence. We can only imagine what would have followed if, hypothetically, such had been given to him – retaliatory punitive actions and repressions (of all kinds) against people who fall within his reach, especially individuals and legal entities in Bulgaria. The full amount of evidence provided is about 300 pages, which can be accessed here. A review of the explicit documents shows, for example, a full professional financial analysis of Peev’s business empire. Including there are indicators such as the credit rating of Int Ltd. (the pearl of the empire), as the rating is in the category of “junk”, which corresponds to an increased probability of default (bankruptcy). For some of Peev’s other companies, the credit rating is close to D (deep junk = deep garbage), and the calculated probability of bankruptcy is close to 100%. Specifically, we are talking about Inttraffic EOOD, as well as Real Estates Int EOOD. The probability that the analysis is wrong is close to zero, since its source is the reputable Bureau van Dijk.

The most interesting, of course, is in the fourteen dark pages, in which the SECRET stamp is repeated more than 20 times. There is hardly any need to explain that in order to put this stamp, above which is only TOP SECRET, the information has been collected, verified and confirmed by the most powerful services in the world.

The list of criminal activities associated with Peevski over the years is long – large-scale cigarette smuggling to the Middle East and Turkey, manipulation and seizure of entire sectors of public procurement, use of Russian funding to take control of Bulgartabac and Vivacom, raiding, subordination of law enforcement institutions through the introduction of his “dwarfs”, etc. Particular attention should be paid to the synchronization between Peevski’s interests in Dunarit and the Novichok attack by GRU agents against the arms dealer Emilian Gebrev. In its decision to include Peevski on the sanctions list, OFAC cited examples of Peevski’s “significant corruption” such as the trade in Bulgarian citizenship and corruption in an unnamed institution. These are things that can be said without a stamp, because they do not affect American national security. The serious stuff is in the “dark” pages, which you can see at the end of the post.

Idle

The pending case in the U.S. Supreme Court is Relentless v. DOC. Generally speaking, the subject matter of the case is the extent to which courts should interpret (narrowly or broadly) the prerogatives of the executive branch to reserve decisions on certain matters to itself. In other words, what is the scope of a law passed by Congress – and does that scope include a broad (or narrow) range of actions that are excluded from judicial review. In Peevski’s case, this concerns two questions: (1) whether a former member of the executive branch (in his role as head of the State Agency for National Security for a short time) could be sanctioned and (2) whether a member of parliament can be sanctioned. According to OFAC and the State Department, in both cases, the answer is yes, and they also provide abundant case law on the issue. A careful review of this practice shows, as we have written before, that among those sanctioned there are also people who have not really had any contact with the authorities – such as the Latvian Aivars Lembergs. He also filed a lawsuit in the United States and lost it. Peevski’s lawyers, on the other hand, do not provide practice. Because such simply does not exist. Instead, they practice in scholasticism and in overflowing from empty to empty.

One-way ticket for “Magnitsky”

If Peev’s appeal is declared inadmissible by the Supreme Court, then everything simply ends at this stage. But even if at some future point Peev’s complaint is accepted as admissible, it has very low chances of being upheld as justified. The State Department’s standards for imposing such sanctions are such that they can withstand judicial review on the merits, however unlikely it will be. In short: in order to make the political decision to put someone on the Magnitsky list, solid evidence has been collected against him, which is valid in court. The opposite has not happened. It is almost unbelievable to make a political decision to remove Magnitsky from the Magnitsky list while the evidence is there. Unlike the Zlatanov notebook in our country, in the United States they cannot disappear.

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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)