Putinium

              Navalny visits Omsk, 8-20-20

by Van Dam

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   8 kms from Varna, Bulgaria:  next to the Estreya Palace is a seven-story apartment complex, completed in 2010 and fitted out in traditional Bulgarian architecture.  It includes massage rooms, a sauna, Turkish baths, a gym and an underground garage.   (Here live (or have bought apartments:) Chemezov, a long-time friend of Putin, having served with him in the KGB in East Germany; other property was bought by the daughters and wife of the former head of Russia’s customs agency, Andrei Belyaninov — another long-time friend of Putin and Chemezov from their KGB connections in East Germany. Those apartments cost around 42 million rubles; other property was bought by the daughters and wife of the former head of Russia’s customs agency, Andrei Belyaninov — another long-time friend of Putin and Chemezov from their KGB connections in East Germany.  Those apartments cost around 42 million rubles.  Alexei Aleshin, former first deputy of Chemezov at Rostec and head of the government’s environment, industrial and nuclear supervision service Rostechnadzor; Alexander Rybas, former director at a Rostec subsidiary, and Aleshin’s former deputy at the environment, industrial and nuclear supervision service; Alexander Bespalov, former head of information at Gazprom who worked with Putin in St. Petersburg in the 1990s; Valery Lukyanenko, deputy chairman of VTB Bank and board member at a Rostec subsidiary.

  The Russian contingent came to the resort at the behest of the Estreya Palace owner — a former Bulgarian KGB officer with the call-sign Plamen — Atanas Karageorgiev, who is friends with the apartment owners on social media; Bultrak’s Moscow office was headed up by Vasily Kichedzhi, who went on to become head of Moscow’s transport and communications department and vice governor of St. Petersburg from 2011 until 2014.

Kichedzhi’s brother, wife and niece were among the first investors in the apartment complex project, as were Chemesov’s relatives.

   In dispatches revealed by WikiLeaks, U.S. diplomats named TIM an organized crime group, writing:  “TIM is involved in a wide range of criminal activities, including extortion and racketeering, intimidation, prostitution, gambling, narcotics trafficking, car theft, and trafficking in stolen automobiles.”   TIM representatives deny such a description of the organization and its activities.

  The organization was registered in Varna in 1993 by three former Bulgarian special forces operatives — Tihomir Mitev, Ivo Kamenov and Marin Mitev.  The group’s work focused on security services — a money spinner which local law enforcement said resembled racketeering….“Every month TIM guards for the luxury hotel were being paid more than the salary for 30 police officers.  But they had just four people driving around the resort,” Stamov said.

  But to secure control over the resort TIM had to fight off competition from a rival syndicate, known as Multigroup. Its leader Ilya Pavlov, the godfather of the Bulgarian mafia and the country’s richest businessman, invested hundreds of millions in developing the region and buying up hotels in the 1990s.  When the government eventually decided to privatize the hotel, the two groups clashed.  In 2003 Pavlov was shot and killed….By the start of the millennium, it had privatized Chimimport, and had filled its portfolio with banks, insurance companies, airlines and ships. Founder Marin Mitev estimated in 2012 TIM accounted for 5% of Bulgaria’s GDP. The three founders are seen as among the five most influential people in the country.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/09/10/investigation-russian-elites-connections-to-bulgarias-largest-crime-group-a71397