Bulgaria has revoked 12 golden passports, and the procedure for five others is underway, Justice Minister Krum Zarkov told Bulgarian Telegraph Agency after a closed meeting of the European Parliament’s Democracy, Rule of Law, and Fundamental Rights Monitoring Group in Brussels on Thursday.
The minister explained that Bulgaria has issued a little over 120 such passports for investments. The controversial scheme was recently shelved over criticism from the European Commission and several irregularities revealed in granting citizenship to wealthy third-country investors.
Currently, the State agency for national security (SANS) is checking each of the issued passports, but no information has been given on who has had their passport revoked and why.
In the summer of 2021, Yanaki Stoilov, the caretaker minister of justice, passed a number of golden passport files to SANS. At the beginning of this year, Nadezhda Yordanova, his successor in the government of Kiril Petkov, explained that SANS found five cases of serious violations in obtaining Bulgarian citizenship and the investigation is ongoing.
Stoilov reported 47 suspicious cases to SANS.
“The Ministry of Justice has demonstrated that when sufficiently clear data comes, we do not hesitate at all to send a proposal to the president to revoke citizenship,” commented Zarkov on Thursday.
He added that after legal changes were passed in the previous parliament National Malta and Cyprus had similar schemes but Nicosia suspended its own recently over corruption concerns. Only Valletta continues and as a consequence, it is facing court proceedings from the EU.
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
