January 21 – A special committee in the Bulgarian parliament heard from the Chairman of the State Agency for National Security Plamen Tonchev and the Chairman of the State Intelligence Agency Antoan Genchev regarding the 10-year ban on Botev Plovdiv owner Anton Zingarevich from entering Bulgaria.
Botev Plovdiv management met representatives of several political parties in Bulgaria in December requesting more information about the case, with politicians taking the case to the National Assembly of Bulgaria.
The parliamentary debate took place behind closed doors and without the presence of media. Afterwards, Stanislav Balabanov, representative of political party ‘There is Such a People’, told media that no specific reasons were given for the ban on Zingarevich.
He said: “For an hour and a half we listened to hypotheses, doubts, almost without any facts about how dangerous the owner of PFC Botev Plovdiv Anton Zingarevich is for our national security. My conclusion is that he is actually ‘dangerous’ because he is а Russian, since there was no information that other European countries in the European Union had imposed any sanctions on him.”
Balabanov added: “And unfortunately, I must tell you that the supporters of the football club Botev are absolutely within their right to express their civic position as they see fit.
“It turned out that there was no reason to close this meeting. When closing a meeting, you need to have specifics, and not to disguise this time so as not to expose yourself on television while discussing speculation. Most of the presentations by the representatives of the institutions were in the form of various definitions such as ‘it is rumored that’, ‘we have doubts that…’ Speculations and hypotheses. We said many times to give specifics on the topic, but we were not given any.”
According to unconfirmed information from the Plovdiv daily newspaper Maritsa, Zingarevich has been expelled from Bulgaria for a cryptocurrency scheme. Botev Plovdiv have become the first Bulgarian club to start accepting cryptocurrency payments, but this remains in the realm of conjecture.
Contact the writer of this story, Aleksander Krassimirov, at moc.llabtoofdlrowedisni@ofni