– Disclosure of the specialized American publication Foreign Lobby Report
– The company with which the native businessmen have contracts is owned by the former American diplomat Marshall Harris
– Two former US ambassadors are also taking part in a conference discussion on the situation in Bulgaria, organized by lobbyists
The blackening campaign against Bulgaria, launched a few days ago by two US senators in their personal capacity, but misrepresented by certain circles in our country as the official position of the United States, will probably turn out to be just a job well done for a decent fee.
And this is a revelation made not in Bulgaria, but by an American edition.
The lobbying campaign, which strongly emphasizes that Bulgaria is deviating from democratic principles, is yielding results, the specialized American publication Foreign Lobby Report writes in its weekly bulletin.
Last week, two U.S. senators, Democrat Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Jim Rich, a senior Republican on the same committee, issued a joint statement warning that “persistent corruption, declining media freedom, politicization of the judiciary and other threats to the rule of law pose serious challenges to bilateral relations between the United States and Bulgaria. ” The Democrat and the Republican made their “spontaneous” appearances on social networks on March 5
gave rise to the president
Rumen Radev to attack again
the government, presenting its position not as a criticism but as a corrective to power.
The “failure” of the head of state to note that the position of Bob Menendez and Jim Rich is personal and does not involve the US Senate, as expected, provoked an angry reaction from GERB.
“If the government had listened earlier to what I was saying, to the demands of the people and to the protesters, this devastating assessment of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee would not have come out,” Radev told the media. (See in the box below what the connection of the Secretary of the President Plamen Uzunov with Bobokov is).
Former Foreign Minister Daniel Mitov and Deputy Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev gave a briefing at which they showed a printout from the official website of the US Senate, where there is no position against Bulgaria.
“President Radev is lying extremely brutally and unceremoniously,” Georgiev said.
According to the Foreign Lobby Report, the criticism of Bulgaria has emerged thanks to a lobbying campaign in defense of accused businessmen in Bulgaria. The short bulletin does not specify who they are, but with an active link the statement leads to information from November 2020 that the lobbying company “Alexandria Group International” of former US diplomat Marshall Harris has been hired to lobby in favor of alcoholic boss Minyu Staykov. There are two cases against Staykov before the Specialized Criminal Court, one of which is for fraud with European Union funds.
The contract with “Alexandria Group
International ”is signed on
November 1, 2020 by Minyu Staykov’s wife
– Renee, and is valid until April 30, 2021.
Marshall Harris is a longtime diplomat whose career began around the fall of the Iron Curtain. He worked as an assistant to US Secretary of State (1989-1992) James Baker, and left in 1993 to disagree with US inaction on the Bosnian conflict. He is the founder and leader of the Balkan Action Council, which brings together 50 American citizens fighting for the United States to stop the genocide in Bosnia.
Marshall Harris is the manager
partner in the lobby
Alexandria Group International.
His partner is John Menzies, who in the early 1990s was a culture and press adviser at the embassy in Sofia.
In the summer of 2020, another American publication, Politico, reported that Plamen Bobokov, his wife, Christina, and his brother, Atanas Bobokov, had hired the same Marshall Harris firm to lobby for them in Congress and the Donald Trump administration. with the charges against them for importing hazardous waste from Italy and their illegal burial in Bulgaria.
According to the information, the initial term of
contract of value
$ 156,000 between
Bobokovi and the lobbying company
has been for six months, until December 31, 2020. There is a possibility for its extension.
“24 Chasa” contacted Bobokovi’s office, but they replied that they would not comment.
“24 Chasa” also checked directly in the register of foreign lobbyists of the USA and it is evident that Plamen Bobokov agreed to pay 26,000 dollars a month to lobbyists in the USA for 6 months from July 1 to December 31, 2020.
The first installment
out of a total of $ 78,000
was made in 3 months
This is clear from a document registered with the US Department of Justice on July 10 last year. under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that requires any American company that lobbies for foreigners to provide information.
The lobbyist company declares that it will contact the relevant policymakers and opinion shapers to support its client’s goal of informing the state about the business climate, civil society, corruption, transparency, justice and the rule of law in Bulgaria.
The registration shall specify that in order to achieve this objective,
the company lobbyist will contact
representatives of the executive
authority, members of Congress,
think-tank experts
and media representatives.
The lobbyist’s representative is Marshall Harris, and the customers are said to be owners of a business whose companies produce batteries.
A month and a half after the signing of the contract with Bobokovi, Alexandria Group International finished two reports, which it also registered with the US Department of Justice on August 17.
The reports tell in detail who the Bobokovs are and give details about the situation in Bulgaria.
Alexandria Group International will lobby Congress and the Trump administration, as well as staff at the US Embassy in Sofia, to achieve Bobokov’s goals regarding their human rights and civil liberties, as well as the state and development of the business climate, civil society, corruption, transparency, the judiciary and the overall rule of law in Bulgaria, ”reads a copy of the contract submitted by the lobbying firm to the US Department of Justice.
Marshall Harris himself commented at the time: “I was committed to calling on American politicians to respond appropriately to the growing crime and the Bulgarian regime’s disrespect for the rule of law – including the arrest of my clients, the Bobokov brothers, and others on false, extortionate charges.
“The growing street protests that Politico and other major media outlets show are the reluctance of Bulgarian citizens to continue to tolerate the prime minister and his corrupt supporters,” Marshall Harris said in a July 2020 statement.
After the sharp criticism of the US senators against Bulgaria last week, the Foreign Lobby Report learned that
they are preceded
from conference
conversation on February 22nd
with a dozen employees on
foreign affairs
by the House of Representatives and the US Senate before the elections in Bulgaria on April 4. Former US ambassadors to Bulgaria James Pardew and Roderick Moore also took part in the conversation. The conversation was arranged by Marshall Harris.
“I was impressed that Congress was so interested in Bulgaria’s decline and the need for reform, and that officials were so motivated that some of them would like to travel to observe the election,” Harris said.
James Pardew was the US Ambassador to Bulgaria from 2002-2005, and much of his diplomatic career has focused on the Balkans.
Roderick Moore served as James Pardew’s deputy at the US Embassy in Sofia from 2000 to 2003 before moving to Belgrade. In the second part of 2015, for 3 months he was a charger d’affair of the US Embassy in Bulgaria, after which the then US President Barack Obama nominated Eric Rubin as the new ambassador.
The presence of former US ambassadors to Bulgaria James Pardew and Roderick Moore at the meeting, organized by Harris, is not surprising, given their long acquaintance. While active diplomats, all three have professional commitments at almost the same time in the Balkans.
It is noteworthy that after several years of absence from public life in our country, shortly after hiring an American lobbying company from Bobokovi, the respected diplomat James Pardew gave several interviews and published an author’s article in foreign and Bulgarian media in which he expressed the same critical remarks. and in the position of both Senators Menendez and Rish.
In the midst of the protests in the autumn of 2020, in an author’s article for Politico, James Pardew wrote that “at first glance, Bulgaria gives the impression of a democratic state, but in reality its political and judicial structure is fundamentally rotten.”
The lobbying action described by the Foreign Lobby Report coincided with the moment when the two Bobokovi brothers and their accomplices, including former Deputy Minister of Environment and Water Krassimir Zhivkov, received the accusations from the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office on the affair with dangerous rubbish. The case is extremely interesting because the investigation turned out to involve the Italian prosecutor’s office “Antimafia”, and three of the alleged accomplices of Bobokovi have already pleaded guilty and are ready to testify about violations of the law.
Bobokov lobbied in front of Radev’s secretary for a tanker, a prosecutor and friends
While in the USA lobbying is legal, in Bulgaria it is not. In Bulgaria Plamen Bobokov was detained and accused of trading in influence in July last year. together with the Secretary of the President Plamen Uzunov. The investigation into the case continues. The prosecutor’s office published a communication between the two, from which it became clear that Bobokov was lobbying informally on several cases.
The first is for the release of the Libyan tanker BADR, to which a Bulgarian company has claims due to debts. It is clear from the chats that Uzunov sent Bobokov an as yet unpublished decision of the Supreme Administrative Court on the case with the tanker. According to the businessman, he was interested in the case and petitioned for the release of the Libyan vessel because he has a business in the African country and wants Bulgaria to have good relations with Libya.
Other cases of lobbying came out of Bobokov’s phone then. He discussed with Rumen Radev’s secretary how his Russian friend could obtain a Bulgarian passport. His request was not granted by the Citizenship Council after an objection from SANS.
The third case of communication between Uzunov and Bobokov is again related to a friend of the businessman. He is a Bulgarian of Libyan origin and had a criminal registration with the Ministry of Interior, for which he wants to be deleted.
“Adash, I forgot to remind you to check for my Libyan friend through your channels,” Bobokov wrote. “Ok. I will see on Tuesday “, answers Plamen Uzunov, who, before starting work for the President, was the head of the Ministry of Interior in Plovdiv and the Minister of Interior in the caretaker government of Ognyan Gerdjikov.
The prosecutor’s office then announced that Bobokov had also been in contact “probably with persons with immunity”, but it was not clear whether this was Rumen Radev.
The last case of lobbying, announced at the time, was the election of a district prosecutor in Ruse. Chats were found in Bobokov’s phone, with which he petitioned for his friend Nikolay Nikolov, who, however, was not elected. Bobokov later confirmed this.
Alexandria Group is a lobbyist, which operates mainly on the Balkan market
The company is owned by former diplomats in our country
Alexandria Group is a company of former American diplomats in Bulgaria and the Balkans, whose website shows that their clients are mainly people with justice problems in their own countries. For example in Bosnia and Bulgaria. They specialize in establishing links with the American legislature of their clients.
They openly advertise with their clients from the Balkans and Africa. There is also a Montenegrin in the company – Zorica Djordjevic, who also finds other Balkan clients.
It openly offers connections with influential people in the United States legislature, government, and media who can change policy on specific topics and change public opinion in America and beyond. Obviously, legal American lobbying is legitimate corruption. The ad sounds like it was written by a Russian bot. But thanks to the American Lobbying and Register Act, this thing is public. And it is clear when and which foreign nationals have requested the services of these lobbyists.
– .
