Bulgaria Govt to Sue Ex Tsar Saxe-Coburg to Regain All Forest Plots

The Bulgarian government is moving to dispossess former monarch and former PM Saxe-Coburg of all forest plots restituted to his family after 2001. Photo by BGNES

The Bulgarian government is going to sue former Tsar and former Prime Minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, in order to dispute his ownership of all 16 000 decares of forest plots that were restored to his ownership after 2001.

This has been announced Monday by Bulgaria’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture and head of the State Forestry Agency, Georgi Kostov, in an interview for the Sega Daily.

Kostov is quoted as saying the suit would be filed by Wednesday, November 4, 2009. This is the latest the development in the saga with the so called “Tsar’s estates” - the properties that were allegedly owned by the Bulgarian royal family before 1946, and that were restored to Saxe-Coburg’s ownership after he became Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 2001.

Deputy Minister Kostov has pointed out that while the government had been considering to demand back only the 4 521 decares that Saxe-Coburg allegedly received on top of what he was supposed to received, it had actually found grounds to seek the recovery of all 16 000 decares of forest plots in the Rila Mountain.

Thus, in Kostov’s words, the government will let Saxe-Coburg and his sister Maria Luisa present evidence for the legality of their claims on the forest lands in question, which will amount to an all-out revision of the restitution of the royal estates.

Kostov reveals the cabinet has hired a private law firm to help it with the judicial proceedings.

One of the legal arguments of the government for seeking to regain ownership over the forest plots in Rila is the fact that some of the lands claimed by Saxe-Coburg are part of the Rila National Park, and he has been compensated with other plots. “Yet, his claims were over lands covered with bushes and empty slopes, whereas instead he got compensated with high-quality forests,” Kostov says.

Another motive has to do with the lands near the Beli Iskar village, where according to the Deputy Minister, the local people had documents showing the lands given to the former Tsar were never state-owned but municipal and private, which means the local state land restitution commission in the town of Samokov had no right to dispose of them.

Still another argument for the government to seek the re-nationalization of all of Saxe-Coburg’s lands in Rila is that it will thus have grounds to demand the prohibition of all lumbering activities in them until the final ruling of the court. Kostov also says the state will be suing the descendants of the royal family for any missed benefits from wood cutting in the disputed plots.

The Deputy Minister admits it would be very hard for the state to regain the 1 400 decares of land that Saxe-Coburg already sold to third parties in 2007 and 2008.

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