"Bulgaria's Trump" charged with extortion

/ Veselin Mareshki Wikipedia
By bne IntelliNews July 13, 2017

A prosecutor from Bulgaria’s specialised anti-corruption unit has pressed extortion charges against deputy parliament speaker Veselin Mareshki, a notice on the prosecutor’s office website said on July 13.

Businessman Mareshki’s recent entrance to politics and populist stance have earned him the nickname “Bulgaria’s Trump”. He is the leader of centre-right party Volya (Will), the smallest formation in the current parliament. His party is not part of the government led by the centre-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB). 

Mareshki owns a large chain of pharmacies and is developing a chain of petrol stations. Both businesses are known for selling at low prices.

On July 13, the prosecutor claimed that in the period autumn 2012 – end-2015 Mareshki had threatened seven pharmacy owners in the cities of Varna, Dobrich, Vidin, Pleven and Sofia.

Mareshki allegedly threatened to ruin these people’s businesses through biased control by the Bulgarian Drug Agency and unfair competition. The prosecutor claims that in four of the cases Mareshki committed the extortion alone. The other three cases included one or two more people, currently Volya MPs.

One of the purposes of the threats allegedly was to “convince” these people to transfer equity stakes in their firms to companies owned or controlled by Mareshki. Another goal was to force them out of business. A third objective was to make them buy medicines from Mareshki’s warehouse, the prosecutor claims.

Mareshki has already given up his parliamentary immunity.

Also on July 13, Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov ordered a check of earlier statements by Mareshki that he was subject to pressure in connection with the charges against him, in order to terminate his fuel trading business. Mareshki complained that he had been given a deadline to close the business by the end of May.

At Bulgaria’s latest early general elections, held on March 26, Volya won 4.26% of the votes and has 12 lawmakers in the 240-seat parliament. Volya was considered a possible coalition partner for GERB, the winner of the elections, but GERB decided to form a ruling coalition with only one partner, the nationalist United Patriots coalition.

 

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