After 2014, Bulgaria did not impose sanctions against Russian citizens or companies included in the EU sanctions list. They imposed the only restrictions in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea.
This is stated in the answers provided by the National Tax Service of the country to a request from Euractive and Mediapool.bg.
In Bulgaria, almost 300 000 Russians own more than 500 000 real estate properties. The tax office recognizes that it should apply EU rules on sanctions, but has not yet done so.
The Bulgarian legal system only provides for the seizure of assets, not their freezing. As the lawyers explained, according to the rules, EU countries must be subject to sanctions, that is, tax authorities must initiate the freezing procedure, even if no national legislation provides for such procedures.
In addition, in response to the journalistsʼ request, it was noted that over the past 8 years, the tax department has not issued a single act on the imposition of sanctions.
The agency said that in the event of sanctions, the names and assets of individuals who may be subject to sanctions will not be disclosed in the future, as this data is personal and therefore protected by the EUʼs General Data Protection Directive (GDPR).
However, the investigative website Bird.bg has already released some names from the EU sanctions list. Among them are Serhiy Chemezov, Maksym Topilin, Volodymyr Pligin and Oleksiy Chepa, who own real estate on the Black Sea coast through their relatives.
- So far, the EU has imposed sanctions against 1 386 Russian citizens and 171 companies, as well as all related individuals and legal entities. Last year, it froze more than €300 billion in Russian banks and €20 billion in assets belonging to Russian oligarchs. Even Hungary, which often advocates positions in favor of Russia, has frozen Russian assets worth more than €900 million.