Former UN Special Envoy is the Second Bulgarian in "Pandora Papers"

Nikolay Mladenov - former War Minister and Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, has registered an offshore company in the Seychelles through a Swiss intermediary, the website bird.bg reports. This happened in August 2013, a few months after Nikolay Mladenov left Bulgarian politics and a week after he became the UN special envoy for Iraq.

Nikolay Mladenov has not declared the company to the UN, according to the investigative website. They also publish Mladenov's own position on the information provided:

“I have always respected journalists and their commitment to the truth, and I have worked with them in the interests of transparency. That is why yesterday I talked to Mr. Chobanov from bird.bg and I thank him for his responsiveness and desire to clarify things. The registration of a company that appears in my name has never worked and has never had financial flows. In 2013, after the end of my term, I decided to start a freelance practice, a new beginning. For this purpose I registered a company through which to work. I contacted Swiss financial advisers and started correspondence with them. Then I received an offer from the UN and my plans changed," Mladenov commented.

Asked about the discrepancy between the dates of his appointment to the UN and the company's registration, Mladenov said he could not remember exactly how the process went, but said it began before his UN mandate began.

The information in the Pandora Files shows that SFM invoiced 600 euros per year to maintain the registration, which was active until 2018. Mladenov assured that he had contacted the company and received a document that it was not active since then.

Nikolay Mladenov was born in Sofia in 1972. He graduated from the English Language High School in Sofia, and in 1995 he graduated in International Relations at the University of National and World Economy. He holds a master's degree from King's College London. From 1996 to 1998 he was the program director of the Open Society Foundation. He followed a political career in DPS, where he rose to deputy chairman. He was an MP in the 38th National Assembly.

After leaving DPS, he was a consultant at the World Bank, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute in Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries in the Middle East.

After the establishment of GERB, he became an MEP from the party, and two years later, when it won the parliamentary elections in 2009, he was initially elected Minister of Defense, and from January 27, 2010 until the end of Boyko Borissov's first cabinet he was a Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In 2011 he married Gergana Grigorova, who since 2014 has been an adviser to Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev.

In August 2013, he was appointed Special Representative of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for Iraq and Head of the UN Mission there. In 2015, Mladenov became the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process and remained in that position until the end of 2020, when he resigned surprisingly, which left many of his international partners questioning.

/BNT

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