Everything else is money taken from the treasury. About 10% of these budgets went to support the First
Sofia, Bulgaria31 July 2023, 21:39 15224 read 2 comments
“I won’t and I don’t want to answer the question of where this money is,” declared Todor Zhivkov before the famous prosecutors who interrogated him in 1990 in Case No. 1 for abuse of power.
Dad, who is stuck in a cell in the investigative detention center of “Razvigor”, remains silent like a communist during interrogation and zealously hides the astronomical 1.8 million BGN at the time (today this amount is equal to about 30 million BGN!) received from royalties for publishing his works. There are doubts that the money was transferred to Swiss banks, claims “Weekend”.
Even before November 10, Zhivkov claimed to his fellow party members that he had duly deposited all fees into the treasury of the Central Committee of the BKP. However, this turns out to be a lie.
The prosecutor’s office presents him with a report from which it appears that not a single lev has gone to the party treasury and that the general secretary is the first communist-millionaire in Bulgaria. Moreover, Bai Tosho avoided paying the full membership fee in the BKP, as only 100 BGN was deducted per month from his salary of 2,500 BGN. Separately, he received 3,000 BGN as a one-time payment as a member of parliament.
“Weekend” examined in detail all the documents in the State Agency “Archives” and in the Commission on the files, referring to the enormous privileges that Todor Zhivkov gave himself and the communist overlord. Our media even managed to talk with former officers of Directorate V of the DS – for safety and security (UBO), called Zhivkov’s personal guard.
They explained that the budgets varied between 70 and 90 million BGN per year. The income from business activity of UBO was minimal – only BGN 3 million. Everything else is money taken from the treasury. About 10% of these budgets went to support the First.
This means that dear comrade Todor Zhivkov has cost us 20 grand per day. In the 70s and 80s of the last century, the largest amount that a citizen of socialist Bulgaria could legally win was BGN 20,000 from a lottery ticket – even that, however, was not paid out in bulk.
The expenses that Zhivkov makes are for escorting, securing the routes through which the autocrat’s motorcade passes, and for the Western luxury in which he and his family live. They also include the maintenance of the state-of-the-art Tu-154 aircraft, the Yak-40, called the “flying limousine of the Politburo”, and the boutique yacht “Balkan”.
In 2011, the Tu-154 was sunk into the sea about 2-3 miles from the resort of St. St. Constantine and Elena” near Varna and became the largest artificial reef. The yacht “Balkan”, hand-made by the best craftsmen in Pisa, was bought by the state in 1981 for 2 million dollars. After November 10, she was sold off for parts.
Todor Zhivkov is not only the main mover, but also the architect of the vicious system through which the communist elite benefits completely illegally.
In 1958 – four years after he headed the party, by a decision of the Secretariat of the Central Committee “B-12” the unreported fund of the entitled was created. Since then, every calendar year, the red coat began to receive thousands of unreported BGN, hidden from the public, reveal the secret notebooks of the head of the UBO, Gen. Ilya Kashev.
When the general committed suicide in the fall of 1986, Gen. Georgi Milushev succeeds him at UBO. Ten days after he was appointed, he was summoned to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Dimitar Stoyanov. The minister gives him two notebooks and tells him to put them away.
They reflect the lots of each of the right holders – the names, the year and the amount. For example, according to the new decision “B-13” of 1981, the general secretary is paid the amount of food used by him and his family – BGN 18,000. The notebooks were seized from the secret treasury of Gen. Kashev after his death.
This is what Minister Stoyanov and his deputy for DS Grigor Shopov are doing. They informed the secretary of the UBO, Chavdar Tomov, that on Zhivkov’s order they should open the cash register and take the available documents. It is clear from the notebooks that gen. Kashev wrote down the amounts handed out in his own hand against each name.
“Zhivkov ordered me: ‘The notebooks must be destroyed!'” recalls Gen. Milushev. However, he consulted with Minister Stoyanov, who told him: “Better keep them and keep them!” This is how the archive for the money of the beneficiaries was stored in the period 1981-1989.
The huge sums were distributed at the beginning of the year, and after the signature of each beneficiary in his batch, the head of the UBO and the chief accountant drew up a protocol, put signatures under it and destroyed the cash orders. Thus, the payment ritual remained secret.
Money for food is not the only thing that members of the Politburo and the Central Committee receive. Zhivkov also distributes additional funds in another way – for representative needs. For example, he gives BGN 12,000 to the members of the Politburo, and BGN 25,000 to himself.
Money is also collected in the black box of the “Special” department of the Ministry of Finance, which was established at the end of the 1950s. It is an off-budget account. The audit, carried out after 1990, found that the largest number of transfers came from the arms company “Kintex” – over BGN 70 million.
A reference in case No. 4/1990 on the economic catastrophe of the BKP found that for the period 1976-1989, from the publishing houses “Partizdat”, BZNS, OF, “Narodna Medvesh”, “Narodna Prosveta” and the agency “Sofia” press” Todor Zhivkov received fees in the amount of BGN 1,895,009. A total income tax of BGN 729,356 was deducted from them.
The net amount is BGN 1,165,652. The reference does not include his royalties in the period 1956-1976, as no documents have been preserved. Most likely, it was a question of such striking figures.
The astronomical sums hardly fit into the propaganda cliché of the BKP for socialist equality. For comparison, during these 13 years, the average monthly salary ranges from BGN 148.08 to BGN 274.33.
The story begins in 1960. Then a collection was published, which included Zhivkov’s welcome speeches and press conferences, as well as other materials from the 15th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. The collected works were originally issued in six, and then supplemented in eight volumes.
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Only by the mid-1970s, a total of 23 volumes of Todor Zhivkov’s works were printed. Milko Balev is recorded as the compiler. Although the last six volumes were published without his participation, he does receive a royalty.
With decision No. 179 of May 16, 1975, the Politburo approved the publication of new works by Zhivkov. This is the largest edition of the “Collected Works” of the Secretary General in 39 volumes.
It is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the April Plenum of the Central Committee of the BKP and is an initiative of the Secretariat of the Central Committee. “Partizdat” publishing house is subsidized with state money, since the price of the volumes does not cover their cost price.
In 1982, for example, Zhivkov was paid a fee of BGN 30,000 as an author for the book “Patriotic Front – Our Historical Conquest”. Each of the 50 cars is valued at BGN 600. Milko Balev collects BGN 2,240 without being a compiler and editor. BGN 20,000 (15,700 net) is the fee for the book on the culture and art of Zhivkov.
In 1986, the Secretary General was paid a fee of BGN 25,816 for the second edition of the book “Todor Zhivkov – Builder of a New Bulgaria”. “I did not write such a book”, the former general secretary of the Central Committee of the BKP admits to the prosecutors – There must be some misunderstanding”.
The works of Todor Zhivkov cross the Bulgarian borders. “Sofia Press” agency prints several editions in foreign languages. In this connection, Ballev visited England, France, Germany, Greece and Switzerland. The expenses for these business trips are covered by the Central Committee, and after he becomes the secretary of the Central Committee and a member of the Politburo, the money comes from the UBO.
The works were also published by the fraternal parties in the social countries. But Zhivkov did not receive a fee from them. Only the Soviet comrades made an exception – they paid Tato a fee as an author, and Balev – as a compiler.
The gigantic sums were received by Todor Zhivkov through the adoption of a special order on the tariff for royalties of publications of the members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the BKP.
The decision for it was made by the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the BKP, headed by Zhivkov himself. The order is under No. VІ-1301 of October 20, 1971 of the Committee for Art and Culture chaired by the poet Pavel Matev. The entire communist fringe around Zhivkov is affected by this order.
This practice shocked the former guerrillas, recognized by the regime as active fighters. They do not have such lion privileges. They can buy a house and a car without any order, but such a purchase costs them about BGN 18,000 and they have to take out a loan from DSK.
“Is that what we fought for, some to be more equal than others?!” declared one of the active fighters. They, as well as citizens, send signals to the Central Committee of the BKP in which they express indignation at this practice.
The new head of Zhivkov’s office, Nikola Stefanov, personally reported these signals to the First. “I let him know briefly what the resentment was about.
From Zhivkov’s behavior, I was left with the conviction that he was not at all surprised that he received royalties at a special rate. He just told me not to deal with the fees, but to tell Georgi Yordanov to cancel this order and not to have a special tariff in the future. I personally spoke with Georgi Yordanov and gave him Zhivkov’s order”, explains Stefanov.
On August 4, 1986, the head of the Committee for Art and Culture, Georgi Yordanov, by Order No. 353 of August 4, 1986, canceled the special tariff.
After the Tenth of November, Zhivkov’s personal nurse Ani Mladenova – a major from the UBO of the DS, told the prosecutors how she mended his socks. This turned out to be suggested by lawyer Reni Tsanova, defender of the First in case #1. Mladenova herself admitted to “Weekend” about this lawyer’s trick, but explained that Zhivkov was giving his worn shirt collars and shoes for repair.
These facts should have built him an image of a reasonable, modest and thrifty person, who in the end was left with only one blanket. Moreover, his biographers from the Institute of History of the BKP to the Central Committee of the BKP suggested to us how the Man of the People lived before September 9 as a poor printer’s worker, fully devoted to the revolutionary struggle.
However, the declassified police file of Zhivkov, which “Weekend” will tell you about on the eve of the date of the communist coup, shatters this myth. In 1937, Todor Zhivkov was followed by the people of the haunted house for communists, Nikola Geshev – head of Department “A” of Public Safety in the Directorate of Police.
A scout with agency number 3252, signed as B. Yankov, sent a report to Geshev. Ironically, the last name of the policeman partly coincides with Bai Tosho’s martial name – Yanko.
In the report, it is recorded that every Sunday, as a typewriter from the State Printing Office, Zhivkov had lunch and dinner at the “Sredets” inn on “Benkovski” Street #12 in the center of Sofia, where the “Skara Bar” restaurant is located today. Even more devastating is the conclusion in the report: “the person is a communist, he was active in the past, but from the follow-up it was not established that he exhibits such activity.”
A team writes the essays, Dad didn’t draw a line
The cabinet that Todor Zhivkov formed and built in the Central Committee of the BKP has no analogue in our history. It is the center of party and state power. It is significant that it is located in the Party House, where the Central Committee of the BKP is and Zhivkov prefers to rule from there, even when he held the post of Prime Minister in the period 1962-1971.
The beginning was in 1950, when Tato was elected secretary of the Central Committee of the BKP. The first collaborator he brings in is Nissim (Niko) Yahiel. He is a party functionary from Ruse who studied philosophy and later rose to the rank of professor.
Yahiel, for his part, proposed Milko Malev, who at that time worked in the “Propaganda and Agitation” department of the Central Committee. In the following years, Milko Balev established himself as first assistant, and from 1954, when Todor Zhivkov was elected first secretary of the BKP, he became his chief of staff until 1986.
The office became a center where dozens of volumes were prepared and published in the name of Zhivkov. After 1956, when he established himself as the sole leader of the BKP, the party leader introduced the practice of the so-called morning “coffee”.
He dictates basic theses and guidelines, which his team calls the “canvas,” and turns them into lengthy reports and publications on his behalf. At the end of his rule – sometime after 1985, Zhivkov did not tolerate other people’s opinions because he considered himself infallible.
Forbids the team from telling how it helps them. However, Todor Zhivkov’s associates did not see a single line written by him, only how he signed the documents they had prepared.
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2023-07-31 18:37:30
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