Български
EnglishIn the show “Delnitsi” (предаването „Делнци“), host Nikolay Kolev (Николай Колев) speaks with Ivelin Mihaylov (Ивелин Михайлов) about the serious threats to his life and an alleged scenario for his physical elimination, Radostin Vassilev’s (Радостин Василев) conduct during the consultations with the Vice President, as well as the plans of the political party “Velichie” (партия „Величие“) to organize civic squads to “hunt” vote buyers in order to counter the “Mafia Party” („Партия Мафия“).
Here is the full and detailed transcript of the conversation between the host and Ivelin Mihaylov (Ивелин Михайлов), based on the video material, with spelling and punctuation edited for better readability, while preserving the original manner of speech, stories, and examples:
Threats and the “Petrohan” scenario
Host: “Today in our studio we have Mr. Mihaylov – the chairman of the parliamentary group of the political party Velichie (политическа партия „Величие“), who were at the Presidency today and spoke with Ms. Iliana Iotova (Илияна Йотова). Ivelin Mihaylov came to our studio looking rather worried…”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “Well, I will tell you why I am worried, Mr. Kolev (Колев). After the murder at Petrohan (Петрохан), which from the very beginning started to look to me like an active setup aimed at dragging in all the inconvenient people… I will explain it on a larger scale.
Today there is a publication by Colonel Markov (полковник Марков). I would ask your colleagues, if possible, to show it – I gave them this publication so they could see what is actually happening. This is a person who publishes, and most importantly, issues a threat. Look, at the end he concludes with the words (supposedly addressed to General Atanasov (генерал Атанасов)): “Everything is politics. I don’t know, I’m telling you, there will be killed people, even politicians,” and underneath it says “by sects.” A little further down again it says “by sects.” This is yet another threat toward me, that I will, in a way, be eliminated.”
Attacks by Radostin Vassilev and accusations of sectarianism
Ivelin Mihaylov: “What is even more interesting is – I would ask your colleagues, if possible, to show the clip I sent them, so that another threat can be seen, because they are coming from four or five places simultaneously, all of them the same. Before we watch the recording, let me read you the headline from the Blitz Agency (агенция „Блиц“) from a little earlier today: ‘Nikolay Markov (Николай Марков) to General Atanasov about Petrohan: Nasko, there will be more killed people, even politicians.’ This is a serious threat.”
“Let us now see Radostin Vassilev (Радостин Василев) on the show Face to Face (предаването „Лице в лице“) today. In that show he says: ‘The Parliament, the Historical Park (Исторически парк) – expect something similar to happen there.’ These are terrifying things. The state must intervene immediately. We have various Templars, it’s a sect… In Sliven (Сливен), when a father committed what is likely a brutal criminal act… Templars with crosses, orders. Vice President Iotova visited them. This is not normal in Bulgaria.”
“And I gave yet another comment – there are many of them as well by Radostin Vassilev – which, if your colleagues could show, he says: ‘You are the same sectarians, but you are enormous fraudsters. You have stolen the money of thousands of Bulgarians. There is no way out of the situation for you and the Timoshenko sect. Everything is over.’”
“Look, this story cannot end until the state is convicted for what it is doing to private businesses. This must once and for all be stopped and people must be compensated, so that all those harmed by the repression of the state – this is not repression, it is like a genocide being carried out against business – can finally see an end to it.”
“But besides him, they are part of an organized criminal group and other people who keep instilling the same thing. Very recently he said that I would end up with ‘a hole in my forehead.’ Other people say the same – that we are also a sect and that the state must intervene. This looks to me like a convenient laundering of Boyko Borisov (Бойко Борисов) and Delyan Peevski (Делян Пеевски) – to do something, like what happened with Alexey Petrov (Алексей Петров), or to trigger new arrests. You remember the previous time when he went on a rampage – again arrests followed, though of course not because of him. The arrests happen because they give him an order – Borisov and Peevski – so that certain actions can later be carried out.”
The scandal at the Presidency
Ivelin Mihaylov: “And today at Vice President Iotova’s, what happened… Again we saw Radostin Vassilev on assignment, going there and behaving so vulgarly. He behaved like an alcoholic in a village tavern, as if he had gone to the president for consultations on forming a government. He does not recognize her, because according to him she is not president.
First, I want to say this: culture – not only in politics, but in society – since he claims to be Orthodox – requires respect for women. First, respect for a woman who is older than him. Second, she is the vice president. When Rumen Radev (Румен Радев) was elected president, she was elected vice president, which means that the people have given their consent for her to assume the role of president if something happens to Radev or if he resigns. If this so-called lawyer confuses terms and says ‘zaprihodyavam’ instead of ‘vhodyiram’ (to ‘zaprihodyavash’ is an accounting term, not a legal one), and if he does not know the Constitution of Bulgaria and how the vice president assumes the role of president, then we are in enormous trouble.”
“But what is worse is that he went there with those people… The same people who threaten ordinary Bulgarians that they will strip them naked, drag them tied up, force them to perform in front of others, take their money. The same people! He went to Vice President Iotova and what he did was to mock her, insult her, and in the end he did not even wait to conclude the conversation in a proper manner. When there are two sides, when I speak with you, Mr. Kolev, I listen to you and you listen to me. And the conversation must end with one of the sides saying: ‘Well, we are finishing, thank you.’”
Lack of protection and the “Mafia Party”
Host: “I want to ask you, when will this feud with him end? Was hostility the driving factor for what he did today at Vice President Iotova’s?”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “No. Mr. Kolev, if someone tells you that you will end up with a hole in your forehead… Naturally, they write under your posts every day, and when you are threatened, you know how you feel. I am a father of four children. They took away my firearm. I have no security like Peevski and Borisov. I have no means to defend myself.
I am standing against the mafia. Borisov has over 160 high-profile murders of people who really had private armies…”
Host: “Wait, you have an army in…”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “It is stationed in Neofit Rilski (Неофит Рилски). While I am here, it stands there and can do nothing. Yes, I am joking. But 160 high-profile murders of people from the underworld – unsolved! Alexey Petrov was killed recently, and we know whom he was bothering – Peevski and Borisov. The connection is not hard to find. Karo (Къро), the murder of one of the Galew Brothers (Братя Галеви), the Notary (Нотариуса), and all these people – and no one solves them. And the same people, through Radostin Vassilev, threaten me every day. Through Colonel Markov, through various vloggers, who together prepare society for an execution that they will call ‘sectarian.’”
What is a sect and the media propaganda
Ivelin Mihaylov: “Since you mentioned the word ‘sectarian’ and they accuse you of being in some sect… Here is what the dictionary says, because many people do not know: ‘A sect is a religious group or community that has separated from the official church and completely rejects or distorts its established dogmas.’”
“Well, Radostin Vassilev called the Templar Order (Тамплиерски орден) a ‘sect’, which is an organization that performs various rituals, but the main thing is not the rituals, but mutual assistance. Rotary Club, the Freemasons – all organizations… We know from deep antiquity how the Templars built hospitals and so on. He claims to be Orthodox, and at the same time lies and slanders – something not accepted in Orthodoxy. He is narcissistic and arrogant.”
“But the issue is that we see a very close connection between the ‘Mafia Party’ and Radostin Vassilev as a final executor of orders. We see Radostin Vassilev as a new Volen Siderov (Волен Сидеров) in the role of the ‘Golden Finger’ of that government.”
“And this begins to make me suspicious. First, I find the case at Petrohan suspicious, because from the very first day all the claims appeared that are now being propagated by Karbovski (Карбовски) and Yavor Dachev (Явор Дачков). By some coincidence, these were also the people who promoted, together with Ivo Prokopiev (Иво Прокопиев), the interview of Boyko Borisov. And then Prokopiev included his vlogger Lyubomir Zhechev (Любомир Жечев) to also propagate this version. At some point we see the capture of the internet space by the ‘Mafia Party’. Obviously these people either have compromising materials or the means to direct the news flow from supposedly independent opposition sources in the direction they want.”
Forestry enterprises and vote buying
Ivelin Mihaylov: “People who protect forests are being called a ‘sect’ and told that civic movements should not self-organize. Now I want to ask you, Mr. Kolev, who takes care of the forests in Bulgaria? It should be the Ministry of Agriculture (Министерство на земеделието), the Ministry of Interior – MVR (МВР)… Do you know that the forestry enterprises are the main traders of votes in entire regions?”
Host: “How so?”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “How? They give people free firewood if they vote for a certain party. Do you know that illegal logging in Bulgaria is the norm, not the exception, and that there is not a single institution that goes and makes any remark?
In the same way that we, the ‘sect,’ submitted 12,000 reports about illegal dumps, which were processed by RIOEW (РИОСВ – Regional Inspectorate of Environment and Water). And we are not talking about the ordinary employees, but about positions of authority – who occupies them, how moral and ethical they are. What is happening is uncontrolled illegal logging. In the villages near Karlovo (Карлово), if you remember Karavelovo (Каравелово), four or five villages… Do you remember the massive destruction from the logs? I think they still haven’t been restored. Do you know that in most settlements, because of uncontrolled logging, there is no water? Groundwater levels have dropped, because they are held by tree roots. Do you know about the landslides, the increase in temperature? In this context, today a landslide occurred on the narrow-gauge railway (теснолинейката). When the state does not work, people begin to self-organize.”
Extortion in the mall by CPC
Ivelin Mihaylov: “Now I want to ask you: when a chairman of a parliamentary group like me goes out in the National Assembly (Народното събрание) in front of all media and says that in City Center Mall (Сити центъра) – or Paradise Center (мол „Парадайс“), as it is now called – on level −2, two employees of the Commission for Counteracting Corruption – CPC (Комисия за противодействие на корупцията) came to extort me to vote with Borisov and Peevski and to stop talking about the revelations we are making, or my people would be jailed… I said this in front of all these media, and three weeks later the show arrests happened.
Mr. Kolev, in a state governed by the rule of law… Today we were supposed to comment on the claim that Bulgaria has no corruption, the lowest corruption signals. How can there be signals when we submit them and they are not reflected? Or have people become so afraid to say the truth that we live in a mafia state and everyone pretends not to see it?
When the media – and today Vice President Iotova defended them, though I don’t see why – when I say that a parliamentary group was extorted by the Commission for Counteracting Corruption on the orders of Peevski and Borisov… I don’t parade around the media, but today you saw how Radostin Vassilev was immediately on ‘Face to Face’ after insulting Vice President Iotova. What we see is this: when you serve the ‘Mafia Party,’ you are allowed on bTV, Nova, BNT. But when you fight for justice, you are repressed, your people are arrested, there are threats against your wife and children… Here, you see threats against me.”
Preparing for the elections: vote hunters
Host: “I would like us to continue discussing these things, but how are you preparing for the elections these days? Vice President Iotova will determine who… How will you make sure that what happened in the previous elections does not happen again?”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “We are preparing with members of the Precinct Election Commissions – PEC (Секционни избирателни комисии, СИК). People must get involved. You see all these outrages, and then people have to go out to protests, pay expensive electricity, then get killed, even have their children abused, and no one reacts. Why? Because we were not active during elections.
Active citizens must participate as PEC members, observers, and people who report irregularities. We must build a civil society that the ‘Mafia Party’ fears, and that civil society must report everywhere there is vote buying and fraud.
Today I even decided that we will create a special NGO (НПО – неправителствена организация) to review all cases, like the Historical Park case and many others, where those in power lie and manipulate, and people don’t know what is true and what is false. This NGO will act as an investigative media for all cases of manipulation by the ‘Mafia Party’ and the people who have manipulated everything for years.
So what we will do is provide PEC members, observers, and squads of ‘vote-buyer hunters.’ These squads have the right to take the money! Because if we have no explanation whose money it is, how these people carry such amounts, to whom they give it, where the receipts and contracts are – this is money laundering.”
Host: “Excuse me, Mr. Mihaylov, but this also costs quite a lot of money.”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “Well, we will finance ourselves from the money of the vote buyers. When we take their money, we will distribute it among the participants. Initially on a voluntary basis.”
Host: “Really?”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “When a person goes hunting, he shares the prey when he catches the game. In the same way, the ‘game’ here are the vote buyers.”
Message to Borisov and Peevski
Ivelin Mihaylov: “I asked a friend to send Boyko Borisov a video about the fate of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s children (децата на Чаушеску). I want to tell Borisov and Peevski that they will not get away with it. It is over. There are situations when people must know when to withdraw from the game in time, before crossing the line. We know the fate of Muammar Gaddafi (Муамар Кадафи). We know the fate of Saddam Hussein (Саддам Хюсейн). We also know the fate of Stalin’s children (децата на Сталин)… of Muammar Gaddafi and his son – they were killed.”
Host: “That’s right.”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “Therefore, what these people should do – if they want… I know they don’t care about their descendants, but if they want at least something to be preserved of them and not to be humiliated – the masses will decide that.”
About BSP and the future
Host: “How do you comment on the election of the new chairman of BSP – Bulgarian Socialist Party (БСП – Българска социалистическа партия)? Would you work with this party on certain laws in parliament?”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “Let me tell you: to change the BSP chairman with the votes of Kiril Dobrev (Кирил Добрев) means a mafia reshuffle. Krum Zarkov (Крум Зарков) may not even know how it is rigged, but what I have said remains – BSP is a very old and heavy structure designed for one million members. Today, however, it certainly has far fewer supporters – 100% fewer than the party Velichie. There are only people in power positions there, serving the interests of Peevski and Borisov.
Let us not forget Dragomir Stoynev (Драгомир Стойнев), Kiril Dobrev… Dobrev is given fuel contracts for the railways, for state enterprises, and thus makes money. Hydropower plants and many other things. These people are part of the mafia. For this reason, even if Elon Musk himself came to lead them, the fate of this party is sealed.”
Final words
Host: “All right, what did we fail to say, as we are approaching the end?”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “The only thing that must be said is this: people must be uncompromising and seek the truth. They are right not to trust this government, because it proves every day through everything it does that it deserves no trust.
We cannot ask Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov (Росен Желязков) (who is still in resignation): ‘Why was the head of police in Pazardzhik (Пазарджик), instead of being dismissed after the crime involving vote buying, appointed as an adviser to the minister or even promoted?’ We asked him: ‘Is this how your government works?’ He said ‘No.’ Should we then understand that this person will be dismissed? No.
When we deal with arrogant people like these, the only thing we can do is take a civic stance. Do not listen to people like Colonel Markov or Radostin Vassilev. Hold them accountable for trying to take away your right to associate freely in order to achieve protection and prosperity.”
Host: “Thank you very much. Will you be in parliament tomorrow?”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “One hundred percent, first thing in the morning, God willing.”
Host: “We will watch with interest, because there may be interesting declarations.”
Ivelin Mihaylov: “Of course. We always try to raise the current issues in the National Assembly, so that even international partners can hear them. The crimes of the ‘Mafia Party’ must not remain hidden.”
Host: “Thank you very much. Ivelin Mihaylov, chairman of the parliamentary group of the political party Velichie.”
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