The Chairwoman of the political party “Velichie,” Mrs. Albena Pekova, addressed the U.S. Secretary of State, Mr. Marco Rubio, regarding the evaluation of the 2024 Country Report on the Republic of Bulgaria.

In this report, “Velichie” is presented in a contradictory and rather enigmatic way, in which its leader, Mr. Ivelin Mihaylov, is depicted as practically a problem for Bulgarian democracy.

Here is the exact excerpt from the report:

Physical Attacks, Imprisonment, and Pressure

Journalists were subjected to harassment, threats, and intimidation by authorities. In July, the Association of European Journalists-Bulgaria (AEJ) filed a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office alleging that Ivelin Mihaylov from the Velichie party ordered the head of a security company to harm journalist Yoan Zapryanov, who had been investigating Mihaylov’s Historical Park complex for nearly five years. Stefan Kalchev, the security company owner, testified to a National Assembly committee that Mihaylov wanted him to “deal with” Zapryanov. Zapryanov faced hostile actions, including having his photograph posted around the village. The AEJ urged the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Varna District Prosecutor’s Office to investigate. Zapryanov’s investigations reported on the accumulation of weapons at the park, military training, and suspected Ponzi scheme operations. The Ministry of Interior and the State Agency for National Security conducted inspections, and the National Revenue Agency investigated significant liabilities accumulated by 10 companies associated with Mihaylov.

The European Commission’s July 24 Rule of Law Report noted that despite steps undertaken by the government to protect journalists from SLAPP cases, journalists continued to encounter online harassment, threats, and lawsuits from public institutions and political actors.

The Verbal Note of Mrs. Pekova as a response to the report above:

The political party Velichie issues this Verbal Note in connection with the 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, published on the official U.S. government website, in the section on the Republic of Bulgaria, as an expression of my deep disagreement with the obviously unchecked and unreliable information presented in the Report regarding the Chairman of the parliamentary group of Velichie in the 51st National Assembly, Mr. Ivelin Mihaylov.

I am aware that this Report was prepared during the period when the Democratic Party dominated in the United States, and that the current administration was likely not familiar either with the reliability of the information or the objectivity of its sources in Bulgaria. However, the fact that in the entire section of the Report concerning the state of human rights in Bulgaria, the only specifically named entities are the political party Velichie and the chairman of our parliamentary group, Mr. Ivelin Mihaylov, is a clear indicator of the self-serving and far from impartial goals of the said source.

The content of the Report, in which we are branded as entities repressing freedom of the press in Bulgaria, in itself is neither a good example of the proper application of the principles of objectivity and fairness nor of diplomacy. Even more unacceptable and troubling is the fact that the “information” reported publicly in the Report is based solely on data from an individual working for the media empire of the economic-oligarchic circle Capital.

It has been known for decades to Bulgarian society and the broader media community that through the media empire built by the oligarch Ivo Prokopiev, together with the economic circle Capital that he created and that gravitates around him, there has long existed a well-organized system for discrediting inconvenient politicians and public figures, driven by insatiable material appetite for appropriating public resources.

Thus, with our proven opposition activity and consistent defence of the rights of ordinary citizens, we in the party Velichie fall within the category of those inconvenient for the Capital circle, from which the information for this section of the Report was drawn.

With even greater perplexity and regret, I note the fact that the Report also comments by name on a private business—the joint-stock company and cultural-historical complex Historical Park, built entirely on a private-law basis. In this respect, the involvement of the state power of a foreign country in such relations, I consider an unacceptable interference in the peaceful activity of private legal entities in another state. This, in practice, amounts to interference in the sovereignty of the Republic of Bulgaria, through which it regulates its internal legal relations.

Whether the drive toward this clearly nihilistic discreditation was prompted by Mr. Mihaylov’s refusal to give consent to a company from the Capital circle for the construction of wind turbines on land adjacent to the cultural-tourist complex Historical Park in the village of Neofit Rilski is a question that the U.S. Department of State should have examined before using information provided by individuals, who, although journalists, work for media outlets in the Capital circle and are clearly in a conflict of interest. In any case, I consider this action absolutely unacceptable both from a diplomatic and a business standpoint.

Not least of all, I would like to emphasize that for a democracy to be genuine and not merely a façade, before embarking on such a responsible project as the annual global human rights report, the author of this document should conduct a broad-ranging examination of the facts, with the information gathered not superficially from the same interested source, but from the widest possible range of sources within the relevant social spheres.

Such non-governmental sources defending human rights in Bulgaria are not lacking, but they were neither notified of the interest of the U.S. Department of State nor consulted to satisfy it. Given this, and because in addition to the journalists already granted access to the U.S. Department of State, who serve the consumerist interests of the Capital circle in Bulgaria, there is also a significant community of journalists here whose work is not financed by the “America for Bulgaria” foundation and who do not share the approach of the Capital circle or its affiliated media, the Report proves to be extremely biased and discriminatory.

Through the Report, in the section in question, an external state to Bulgaria, namely the U.S., in a manner unacceptable from a diplomatic and political perspective, has effectively joined in the political and economic discrediting and destruction not only of our party but also of the Member of Parliament and chairman of our parliamentary group in the 51st National Assembly, Mr. Ivelin Mihaylov. And this, even though precisely this party and its informal leader, Mr. Mihaylov, are currently the only ones recognised by ordinary Bulgarian citizens, both at home and abroad, as the true representatives of their will to fight corruption, violence, and violations of human rights. Even more absurd is the reputational assault committed in this section of the Report against a Bulgarian cultural-tourist complex such as Historical Park, in which, incidentally, not a few American citizens hold shares.

In view of all the above, on behalf of the political party Velichie, I insist on the cessation of the unacceptable interference and political discrediting of the opposition party I represent, carried out by the U.S. Department of State through its annual Human Rights Report in the section concerning the Republic of Bulgaria.

While declaring our readiness to cooperate and engage in bilateral discussions, we also insist on some form of moral compensation for the damage done to our reputation.