“The accounts of the Russian Cultural and Information Center in Sofia can be frozen and the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs would approve such a step.” This became clear from the words of the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Maria Gabriel, who, within the framework of the parliamentary control, answered a question of PP-DB MPs about closing the center in our country.
Gabriel pointed out that the reason for this could be the fact that the Russian Cultural and Information Center in Sofia is in a functional relationship with the Federal Agency for the Affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the so-called “Rossotrudnichestvo”, and she and its head Evgeny Primakov are on the list of those sanctioned by the EU. The manager of the Center was the head of department at “Rossotrudnichestvo”.
“In this sense, and with a view to maintaining a unified EU position towards Russia and in the context of efforts to tackle Russia’s systematic international campaign of disinformation and information manipulation, the Foreign Office would support freezing the assets of Rossotrudnichestvo, including bank accounts of side of the competent authorities in the Republic of Bulgaria”.
Since the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not a competent authority for the application of sanctions, Maria Gabriel proposes to adopt a special normative act that will regulate the powers and responsibilities of individual institutions at the national level with an emphasis on the freezing of financial assets:
“And now there are no obstacles whatsoever to proving the connection between the person on the sanctions list and “Rossotrudnichestvo”. What we lack in Bulgaria is to adopt as quickly as possible the legal act in question, in which financial institutions, credit institutions or those who have competences, to have a clear mechanism according to which they simply have to implement it”.
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