Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday, 5 May 2012

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5 May 2012, Issue 293

by Novinite.com

Bulgaria's Online Weekly Newspaper since 2001

10137 subscribers of Novinite.com

121926 articles

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Sofia Speaking

Thanking Russian Patriarch Kirill for Recognizing Bulgaria

By Ivan Dikov

The visit of Russian Patriarch Kirill to Bulgaria has enjoyed surprisingly high public interest. | read |

Sofia Speaking

Press Freedom (in Bulgaria) Does Not Come On a Plate

By Irina Samokovska

On May 3, the world, Bulgaria included, marked World Press Freedom Day.

| read |

The Week in Pictures

Bulgarian Socialists Adamant on Belene NPP Referendum

Scandal Mars Miss Bulgaria Pageant

EP Chief Schulz Backs Bulgaria's Stanishev for PES President

Bulgaria to Learn Decentralization from Switzerland - President

Bulgaria's Norotious Mobster Pair Goes to Jail

Tadic Urges Serbs to Reelect Him for EU Integration's Sake

Confederation of Bulgarian Syndicates Elects Interim Head as President

Greece Could Still Quit Euro Zone, Venizelos Alarms

Serbian Turbo-folk Diva Bodes Presidency for Bulgarian PM Borisov

Lakeside Murder Suspects Transferred to Skopje Criminal Court

British Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce Marks UK Relaunch in London

HOT PHOTO

Maxim Behar: American Jewish Comittee Contributes to Bulgaria's Positive Image in USA
Bulgarian Ambassador to the USA Elena Poptodorova (middle) hosted a friendly dinner for the Bulgarian delegation and other delegates at the AJC Global Forum 2012 in Washington D.C. Among them Victoria Schonfeld, (second right) Assistant Executive Director

Top Story

Bulgarian President Hints of Vetoing Macedonia's EU Bid over Ambassador Assault

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev has hinted that Bulgaria could block Macedonia's EU accession in a statement over the assault on Bulgarian Ambassador Ivan Petkov in Skopje on Friday.

Plevneliev's statement came Friday night, shortly after Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov issued a strong statement condemning the attack by Macedonian nationalists on the Bulgarian Ambassador in Skopje Ivan Petkov and other Bulgarians who were trying to honor the memory of Bulgarian revolutionary hero Gotse Delchev.

Nationalist "hooligans" have staged an organized attack against a delegation led by the Bulgarian Ambassador in Macedonia Ivan Petkov, which was trying to lay flowers at the grave of Bulgarian revolutionary hero Gotse Delchev (1872-1903).

The newly-appointed Bulgarian Ambassador Ivan Petkov together with local Macedonian Bulgarians attempted to lay wreaths at the grave of Gotse Delchev in the St. Spas Church in Skopje, on day of Delchev's death, May 4, when he and those accompanying him were attacked by Macedonian nationalists, the Focus news agency reported citing witnesses. According to Macedonian Bulgarians from the delegation, the attackers were from a nationalist wing of the ruling Macedonian party VMRO-DPMNE.

"Bulgaria will work for the EU accession of Macedonia but only if Macedonia acts in accordance with this support," Bulgarian President Plevneliev stated regarding the consequences of Skopje incident with the Bulgarian Ambassador.

Interestingly, Plevneliev's statement came in the southern Bulgarian town of Gotse Delchev, which is the President's hometown, and which was named after the Bulgarian revolutionary in question, where he took part in the remembrance ceremonies for the 109th year since Gotse Delchev's death. Earlier on Friday, Plevneliev laid flowers at the monument of Gotse Delchev in the downtown of the southwestern Bulgarian city of Blagoevgrad.

Plevneliev made it clear that he will summon the Macedonian Ambassador in Sofia Blagoj Handijski to give an explanation over the incident with the Bulgarians trying to honor the memory of Gotse Delchev in Skopje.

"We welcome and support the membership of every state in the European family. However, if somebody wants to be a member of this family, they need to prove with actions, not with words, that they love the other member states," the Bulgarian head of state said while laying flowers on the monument of Gotse Delchev in the town of Gotse Delchev.

"Of course that on this day I am in my hometown. It is our obligation to never forget the words of Gotse Delchev that we should not be afraid of splitting and divisions. We should all accept these words as a message to the contemporary Bulgarians. Vasil Levski was the Apostle of Freedom for the entire Bulgarian nation but Gotse Delchev was the Apostle of Freedom for the Macedonian Bulgarians," Plevneliev declared, referring to the fact that Bulgarian revolutionary hero from Macedonia Gotse Delchev (1872-1903) was dubbed the Apostle of Freedom of the Macedonian Bulgarians, after the most prominent Bulgarian anti-Ottoman revolutionary and freedom fighter, Vasil Levski (1837-1873).

The Bulgarian President described the incident in Skopje in which the Bulgarians attempting to honor revolutionary hero Gotse Delchev were attacked with force, and thus forced to flee, failing to lay flowers at the hero's grave, as "unacceptable".

The authorities in Macedonia's capital Skopje have prevented Bulgarian diplomats and Macedonians with Bulgarian self-consciousness from honoring the grave of Gotse Delchev at several instances in the past on both Delchev's birthday - February 4, and the day of his death - May 4.

Back on January 13, 2007, Bulgarian citizens were attacked and beaten by Macedonian nationalists upon laying flowers at the memorial of Bulgarian female hero Mara Buneva, who resisted the Serbian / Yugoslavian occupation of the region of Vardar Macedonia in the 1920s.

Common history is a major issue in the relations between Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia since the latter was considered an inalienable part of the Bulgarian nation until communist Yugoslavia invented a Macedonian nation in 1943-44, and subsequently undertook a meticulous campaign for the creation of a distinct Macedonian national identity that was supposed to be different from the Bulgarian one.

The years after Yugoslavia's collapse and Macedonia's independence in 1991 have seen both an intensification of Macedonian nationalism based on the identity invented in the Yugoslavian period, and an erosion of the Macedonian national idea, with a few dozens of thousands of Slavic Macedonians claiming Bulgarian citizenship on the grounds of their Bulgarian ethnicity.

Gotse Delchev (1872-1903) was a key figure in the liberation movement of the Bulgarians from the historic and geographic regions of Macedonia and Thrace that remained in the Ottoman Empire after Bulgaria's National Liberation in 1878, which however included only some of the Bulgarian populated territories in the regions of Moesia and Thrace.

Delchev was one of the leaders of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO ; VMORO in Bulgarian), which was originally founded in 1893 under the name "Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees".

While in the years before the Ilinder-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903 - the largest uprising of the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace against the rule of the Ottoman Turkish Empire - VMORO's goal was to unite the respective regions with the liberated Bulgaria, after the uprising was crushed, the organization split into several factions with different agendas. Keeping in mind the multiethnic population of the regions of Macedonia and Thrace at the time, Gotse Delchev is known to have voiced the vision of creating an autonomous entity out of the European remaining European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, a vision that was not rejected by the Bulgarian governments in Sofia at the time even though they never doubted the Bulgarian identity of the Slavic Macedonians.

Delchev's remains were transferred to the authorities of the communist Yugoslav republic of Macedonia in the late 1940s by the authorities of communist Bulgaria, which, following the Comintern policies imposed by the Soviet Union, briefly accepted the invention of a distinct Macedonian identity.

Turkcell Confirms: Bulgaria's Vivacom Sale Failed

The creditors of the Bulgarian telecommunications operator Vivacom have given up on its sale, Turkish mobile phone operator Turkcell, which had emerged as the preferred buyer, announced, confirming earlier media reports.

"We received an official letter informing us that the sellers of BTC have aborted their efforts to find a buyer. Turkcell will continue to evaluate acquisition opportunities for similar buyouts," Chief Executive Officer Sureyya Ciliv said at a press conference.

Earlier this week media reports said the planned sale of Bulgaria's incumbent telco BTC has failed after its creditors rejected the offers of all three bidders, including Turkcell, the biggest Turkish mobile-phone company.

Turkcell emerged a month ago as the most likely buyer of the Bulgarian telco, but the deal collapsed after the Turkish operator demanded that a huge part of the price (from EUR 100 M to EUR 200 M) is deposited in an escrow account until the state settles its scores with BTC previous buyers, Capital weekly reported, citing insiders.

The Turkish company reportedly put in a bid of over EUR 870 M.

Earlier reports said the Turkcell valued Vivacom at about USD 1.4 B, but the Turkish company described the potential bid amount in the media as "groundless".

BTC's creditors, who put the company for sale, have described the other two bids â�� by Bulgaria's Corporate Commercial Bank and Icelandic businessman Thor Bjorgolfsson - as too low, the insiders said.

The creditors' decision is expected to be officially announced in a few days, according to the report.

Turkcell announced its decision to make offer for a 93.99% stake in the Bulgarian company, which operates under the brand name Vivacom, at the beginning of March in a statement to Istanbul Stock Exchange, becoming the only strategic investor in the tender.

Another three binding bids were submitted for Bulgaria's telecom Vivacom, but their amounts were not disclosed either.

Tsvetan Vassilev, the head of Bulgaria's Corporate Commercial Bank, and Icelandic businessman Thor Bjorgolfsson have made bids for Vivacom, heir to the state-owned Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC).

The third bidder to meet the February 27 offer deadline was Pamplona Capital Management LLP, a London-based private equity firm.

Morgan Stanley was advising Vivacom's creditors to help sell the company.

Experts commented that the Turkish potential buyer felt uncertain because of Bulgaria's legal actions against Viva Ventures, a subsidiary of London-based equity fund Advent International, which acquired a 65% stake in the state Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC), in a widely criticized deal in 2004.

Viva Ventures paid EUR 230 M for the purchase and another EUR 50 M for a license to establish a third mobile phone operator in Bulgaria. It also agreed to pay BGN 18 M to the Defense Ministry in the course of two years under a classified accord for the maintenance of secret defense communications spots and war-purpose equipments.

The company however has not transferred the payments.

Besides it is expected that a fourth trial may be in the offing over charges of breaching the so-called clawback agreement, which obliged Viva Ventures to pay EUR 78 M to the state in the case of BTC re-sale.

The deadline for submitting binding bids, initially set at February 17, was extended by ten days at the request of Turkcell, who needed more time to take a definitive decision.

Earlier this year reports emerged that Telekom Austria AG, which already owns Mobiltel in Bulgaria, may be interested in Vivacom sale, but the information was eventually denied.

Vivacom - formerly known as the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) - has gone through a number of controversial privatization deals.

The long-drawn-out and widely criticized EUR 230 M sale deal for 65% stake in Bulgaria's telecom operator BTC was sealed at the end of February 2004 after nearly two years of procedural predicaments, legal and political battles.

Months later Icelandic businessman Thor Bjorgolfsson bought Viva's stake for EUR 300 M and resold it to the investment company AIG Central Europe for EUR 1.08 B.

AIG Investments acquired 65% of the former state-owned telecommunications firm in May 2007. Then in August of the same year it upped its investment to 90%.

Chinese telecoms and media tycoon Richard Li, chairman of Asian telco PCCW, inherited control of Vivacom in March 2010 as part of the acquisition of AIG Investments, a unit of the troubled US insurance group which spans asset management and private equity investments.

The unit was renamed Pinebridge Investments ahead of the takeover by Li's Pacific Century group.

Dubai-based Oger Telecom was the closest to taking over the management of the company following negotiations that dragged on for nearly half a year. The deal however failed because the final offer was not satisfactory, according to insiders.

The nation of 7.7 million people has three mobile operators, which are foreign owned. Mobiltel is controlled by Telekom Austria, while Globul is the local unit of Greece's OTE.

World

10 000 Ethnic Albanians Rise against Macedonian Govt over Lakeside Murders

More than 10 000 ethnic Albanians protested in Macedonia's capital Skopje on Friday to demand a fair trial for five people suspected of murder in a case that has raised ethnic tension in the tiny country.
| read |

Business

Bulgarian Customs to Move to Danube City of Ruse

The headquarters of the Bulgarian Customs Agency will be moved to the Danube city of Ruse as part of the decentralization plan of the government.
| read |

More News

· Bulgarian Majors Mull Bucharest Stock Exchange Listing
· Sofia Condemns Attack on Bulgarian Ambassador to Macedonia

· PM Brags about Increasing Life Expectancy of Bulgarians
· Bulgarian MPs Turn Confiscation Bill into Law

Finance