February 4 (BTA) - The opposition Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) have already referred to the prosecution service an alert they have received about suspicious cases of granting Bulgarian citizenship or residence permits in exchange for investments, MRF Deputy Floor Leader Hamid Hamid told a news briefing in Parliament on Friday.

He specified that an alert from a source he declined to identify, which he received in his letter box in the National Assembly, alleged the existence of a "monstrous golden passports scheme". Hamid said that the alert named over 120 persons, mainly Chinese (including some working for the Chinese special services) and Russians, who had obtained residence permits in the 2015-2021 period under false pretence, using the same intermediaries. They remitted an identical amount of money through a particular bank and were granted residence just by submitting photocopies of these statements of account, Hamid said.

He noted that, according to the alert, all investments made were identical and amounted to 1,000,001 leva.

Under the effective legislation, third-country nationals can obtain a permanent resident status if they invest at least 1 million leva and can be granted Bulgarian citizenship for a minimum 2 million leva investment without going through the cumbersome and time-consuming standard procedure.

Mediapool.bg reports that it has a full list of the 96 "golden passport" recipients for that period, including 39 Russians (40 per cent of the total), 8 Chinese, 4 Americans, 20 from the Middle East, 7 Kazakhs, 4 Ukrainians, 3 Indians, 2 Pakistanis, 1 Vietnamese, 1 Israeli and 1 Turk.

The MRF Deputy Floor Leader said that all certificates had been issued by "one Stamen Yanev, an employee at the InvestBulgaria Agency (IBA)", and asked whether Yanev is in a "business relationship with Prime Minister Kiril Petkov".

Yanev is currently IBA Executive Director. He was appointed to this office (which he held between 2015 and 2020) in May 2021 by Petkov when he was caretaker economy minister.

Hamid said that the MRF will take the matter to Brussels and will hold a news briefing there to make all data public.

Approached for comment in Parliament's lobby, Petkov said he was an adamant opponent to the issuing of "golden passports" and that he had assured the European Commission that this practice would be discontinued. He assumes that this is precisely one reason why Bulgaria is not yet part of the Schengen Area and why the US refuses to include it in its visa-waiver programme. "Whoever is involved in this 'golden passports' scheme and we manage to catch them will face the full extent of the law," he warned.

For nearly three years, Bulgaria has stubbornly resisted scrapping that scheme despite being pressured to do so by its Euro-Atlantic partners. The MRF defended the scheme until December 2021, when it did an about-face and launched a fierce attack against it.

Two days ago, the National Assembly Legal Affairs Committee approved on first reading a bill abolishing the passports of convenience scheme.

Most foreigners who have bought Bulgarian "golden passports" have only deposited money in an account in a bank in Bulgaria, which they can withdraw immediately after getting the proof of citizenship. Nobody has bought a real business. Some have purchased government securities which, too, qualify as an eligible investment for naturalization purposes, and many of them have sold back the securities, while those who kept them have received dividends.

Bulgarian passports are attractive to non-EU citizens because they enable them to travel freely in the EU. DS/LG