site.btaSupreme Court Rules on Appeals against Bulgarian List of Persons Associated with Magnitsky Sanction Designees

Sofia, July 6 (BTA) - Seven panels of Bulgaria's Supreme
Administrative Court (SAC) on Tuesday issued rulings on appeals
lodged by legal persons against their inclusion by the Bulgarian
 Government in a "blacklist" and the ensuing adverse
consequences of this action, the Court said in a press release.

By a Council of Ministers Decision of June 4, the appellants
were listed as associates of six Bulgarian citizens (including
three former public officials, one current official - National
Bureau for Control on Special Intelligence-Gathering Devices
Deputy Chair Ilko Zhelyazkov and controversial businessmen
Delyan Peevski and Vassil Bojkov) and their networks of 64
entities that were sanctioned on June 2 by the US Treasury
Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the US State
Department over their involvement in significant corruption in
Bulgaria. The sanctions, imposed under the Global Magnitsky Act,
 ban the designees from entering the US and block their business
 operations and bank accounts there.

The idea of the Bulgarian list was to minimize the risk of
Bulgarian banks and companies themselves incurring the US
sanctions. Later on, it was reported that the bank accounts in
Bulgaria of Peevski, Bojkov and Zhelyazkov had been frozen.
Since this country does not have legislation similar to the
Magnitsky Act, the Measures Against Money Laundering Act was
invoked as a legal basis.

The SAC said it has already been approached with 54 appeals from
 natural persons affected by the Government decision, including
four on Tuesday alone.

In six of the seven SAC rulings issued on Tuesday, the Court
panels referred the appeals to the Sofia City Administrative
Court as a first-instance court and instructed it to rule
immediately on the requests to revoke the government decision
and suspend its effect.

For its part, the seventh three-judge panel ruled that the
appeal against the decision directly halts its effect. The Court
 recalled that anticipatory enforcement of the government
decision had not been allowed, which means that the lodgment of
the appeal itself suspends its enforcement. The SAC instructed
the Council of Ministers to prove the grounds on which all
people have been included in a sanctioning list by virtue of
Bulgarian legislation. This SAC ruling is appealable before a
five-judge panel of the same court. NV/LG