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Bulgaria will not receive the gold and silver requested by Russia, because against them it has received their value in international currency, writes the Russian magazine “Arguments and Facts”. FOCUS News Agency presents the answer to the question “What gold does Bulgaria want from Russia?”
Bulgaria’s right to ask Russia for 22 tons of gold and 50 tons of silver was recognized by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). He ruled that Moscow should return the former Bulgarian assets purchased by the USSR at the expense of the foreign debt to the former Bulgarian Tsar Simeon II (Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha), who filed a lawsuit.
In 1960, the State Bank of the USSR complied with the request of the Bulgarian National Bank and repaid the country’s Western loans by buying gold and silver. They paid them in convertible currency at the market rate. In the 1990s, Bulgarians overturned a decision to sell the Soviet Union’s gold reserves, and the ECtHR ordered the Bulgarian government to pass a law on the return of royal assets, requiring the return of precious metals to the former US monarch.
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“The agreement between Bulgaria and the USSR was in accordance with international law,” said Valeri Abramov, chief researcher at the Institute for the Study of International Economic Relations at the University of Finance under the Government of the Russian Federation.
It was not our country that confiscated the gold and silver from the tsar, but Bulgaria handed them over to the USSR not only in this way, but also by receiving their value in foreign currency. The claim of the former tsar is legitimate only with regard to properties located on the territory of Bulgaria, but not in Russia. Furthermore, the ECtHR has no right to deal with such disputes, it is not a matter of economic arbitration. Finally, the Russian Federation has priority over national law over international law. Thus, Bulgaria will not receive gold from us, concluded Abramov.
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