“Prosecutor general Sotir Tsatsarov and minister of interior Mladen Marinov are on a working visit to the United Arab Emirates at the invitation of UAE attorney general Dr Hamad Saif bin Musallam Al Shamsi. The aim of the visit is to discuss possibilities for enhancing cooperation on penal issues and counteracting terrorism and crime.”
With this brief and formulaic news release Bulgaria’s prosecutor’s office and ministry of interior announced the surprise visit of two key figures of the security sector in the UAE.
The strange visit of Tsatsarov and Marinov was covered in pro-government and public media in a terse style with headlines like “Bulgaria exchanges experience with Abu Dhabi”. And that was not a surprise. The more so that the official news release of the prosecutor’s office in Bulgaria was in the same tone:
“During the bilateral meeting with Dr Al Shamsi the Bulgarian delegation was acquainted in detail with the penal lawsuit management system of the UAE, which unites the information of police, various prosecution bodies and penal courts in the country. The parties discussed common and different aspects of the structure and activity of prosecution in the two countries and expressed readiness to develop and strengthen their direct contacts and cooperation on concrete issues of mutual interest. An agreement was reached on the drafting and signing, in the shortest term possible, of a memorandum of cooperation between the prosecutor’s offices of the two countries.”
Still, the most logical question is what for God’s sake are Sotir Tsatsarov and Mladen Marinov doing in the Emirates. So far the two have rarely had public appearances together. The latest one for instance was in December 2018 in connection with an exhibition opening. Earlier last year Marinov and Tsatsarov appeared in Ruse in an attempt to ease public tension about the murder of local television journalist Viktoria Marinova.
If Bulgaria is to draw experience in law enforcement from the United Arab Emirates, that is frightening. The UAE is among the countries that still impose the death penalty. If the reason is not exchange of experience but counteracting terrorism, there should be a really good reason for the visit of such high-level Bulgarian officials. That sounds strange in the light of public statements of Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borisov about Bulgaria’s good relations with the Emirates and the Arab world. As a matter of fact Borisov himself was on a visit to the UAE just a few months ago. That was the first visit at a prime-minister level in the history of Bulgaria’s relations with the UAE.
What makes Bulgaria have such interest in the UAE
The Emirates are not a country with which Bulgaria has traditional relations. For the past few years there have been two main lines of cohesion. One is arms trade. In 2017 the Middle East accounted for more than 50% of Bulgarian arms traders’ market with a volume of €617 million. It is true that the UAE is still a small part of it.
The annual report of the interministerial commission for export control and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction with the minister for economy on the implementation of the Export Control on Defense-Related Products and Dual-Use Items Act shows that products worth €17 million were exported to the UAE in 2017. For comparison, exports to Saudi Arabia amounted to €417 million. Still, exports to the UAE have increased 500 times for three years.
It is the UAE that was pinpointed in an investigation of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network on how weapons produced in Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, reached military zones in Syria.
The journalistic network cites data according to which in October 2014 a whole fleet of Boeing 747s with the sign of Saudi Arabian Cargo started landing at the airport of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. That has not happened for the past 20 years.
It is not clear what was on board. The sudden appearance of Saudi cargo planes strangely coincides with the rapid surge in the number of licenses issued for export of Bulgarian weapons to the emirate.
Once the Saudi flights ceased, there started arriving planes from Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. Airbus A330Fs and Boeing 777Fs with the sign of Etihad Cargo landed in Sofia five times between the end of June and the middle of August 2015. On October 19 an Etihad Cargo Airbus 330F coming from Abu Dhabi landed in Burgas and then flew off to the military base of Al Dhafra that is located south of the Emirates’ capital.
Peevski on stage
If weapon deliveries may not be a priority in prosecutor general Tsatsarov’s interest, the second line of cohesion between Bulgaria and the UAE may be something different. The Emirates have turned into a major business destination of Bulgaria’s wealthiest MP, Delyan Peevski. Though it is not quite clear what kind of business he conducts, for the past three years Peevski has declared savings and property worth tens of millions of dollars mainly from offshore destinations in the region. The main company under Peevski’s control, Intrust Limited, is based exactly in Abu Dhabi. Another of the emirates, Dubai, has become a hub of trade and redistribution of financial resource of Bulgartabac Holding. It is in Dubai that a number of the cigarette holding’s representative and intermediary companies for the region of the Middle East are registered. It was there again that the official end buyer was registered when Bulgartabac Holding’s ownership changed in 2014. Ever since the deal took place Peevski has been believed to be the man holding the control over the company. He was pointed as the owner of Bulgartabac Holding by one of KTB’s former directors, Georgi Hristov. Before going bankrupt in 2014, KTB was the servicing bank of Bulgartabac Holding and one of its lenders.
The group of Bulgartabac in turn was pointed out by the Turkish services as the source of contraband cigarettes in the country that were channeled through Dubai. Accidentally or not, prosecutor general Sotir Tsatsarov has had four whole visits to Turkey during his term so far. The prosecution and even the interior ministry received the report of the Turkish services on cigarette contraband with Bulgartabac as the source but never found a good reason to start investigating it.
What Tsatsarov and Marinov will come back with from the UAE is not clear. According to the official release of the prosecution however,
“Counteracting terrorism and extremism, as well as counteracting crimes committed by citizens of one country on the territory of the other were pointed out as common priorities of the two parties. An agreement was reached on the timely exchange of information about concrete investigations conducted by the two countries. The parties discussed possibilities for exchange of experience at an expert level on different activity lines.”
