site.btaCC-DB’s Atanas Atanasov Heads Ad Hoc Committee on Possible Illegal Granting of Bulgarian Citizenship

Atanas Atanasov from Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) headed on Wednesday the parliamentary ad hoc committee of inquiry into the activities of Gleb Myshin, for possible granting of Bulgarian citizenship. Atanasov received 125 votes in favour, 31 against and 6 abstentions.

The other nomination for committee chair, that of Petar Petrov from Vazrazhdane, failed to get more votes: 44 MPs were in favour, 76 against, and 44 abstained.

Valentin Radev from GERB-UDF and Tsvetan Enchev from MRF were elected as vice-chairs.

The committee will work for three months and will come up with a report on the results of its activities. 

The sponsors of the draft decision on the ad hoc committee are Boyko Borissov, Delyan Peevski, Atanas Atanasov, Temenuzhka Petkova, Raya Nazaryan, and Erten Anisova.

The aim is to verify all the facts and circumstances of Gleb Myshin's activities for possible illegal granting of Bulgarian citizenship, the authors of the decision write. It will also have to verify the data presented in a publication on the Mediapool website on February 7 with the title "The Gleb Myshin scheme: over 4,000 people from the former USSR try to get a BG passport". The publication also stated that the documents in question had been through a SANS check, and that no problem had been found with the vast majority of them.

Data on the existence of a Russian scheme to obtain Bulgarian citizenship was announced by Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB) leader Atanas Atanasov in a broadcast on BNT on January 31. In it, he stated that "a mythical person is giving Bulgarian citizenship to Russians".

The committee will also be tasked with investigating and ascertaining at what levels the national security has been breached and how many of these more than 4,000 files for obtaining Bulgarian citizenship contain documents with false content.