The caretaker government took office less than three weeks ago, but has already been embroiled in several spectacular scandals. Instead of taking care of the fair conduct of the election, which is its only task for the short time it will last, the cabinet has called for rude revenge in favor of a small group of hybrid "protesters" that walked the yellow paving stones all year.

For example, on the third day after taking office, Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov began publicly "firing" uncomfortable journalists, and justified his purge at the Interior Ministry with "sociological surveys."

Apart from that, the former head of the special intelligence resources Control Bureau hurried to appoint as the "chief of staff" of the Interior ministry Elena Ficherova-Karaivanova, close to the accused businessman Vasil Bozhkov, who is hiding in Dubai. 

The Minister of Finance Asen Vassilev (for whom it is not clear how he will manage the state's finances, given that his own company Everbread has gone bankrupt, with debts of 9 million British pounds), did not lag behind and appointed a director of the National revenue agency of the bodybuilder Rumen Spetsov. On of his "specialties" turned out to be, in addition to pumping up muscles, the sale of a company to a with his participation to a proxy, which later turned out to have tax liabilities of over BGN 1 million. It may also be a coincidence that Spetsov lives in Dubai, only miles away from Bozhkov. The new chief of the National revenue agency is also a "fan" of the gambling boss, at least on Facebook.

The new Minister of Economy Kiril Petkov deserves special attention. Instead of reporting on the situation of the country in the crisis and using his diplomas from abroad to help the country to cope with the covid challenge, he immediately started to discredit his ward Bulgarian Development Bank.

Why this is so remains to be seen, but it is no wonder that the interests of the Capital circle turn out to be leading (or affected), and Petkov's shorthand - thrown by him lightly into the media space, for loans allegedly given to companies related to Delyan Peevski was quickly dethroned by MRF Deputy Chairman Yordan Tsonev.

Separately, the minister's attempt to organize a public "Big Brother" on the Internet, in which he tried to call the eight largest borrowers "on the carpet" and to tray explain why they were financed by the state bank and what they used their loans for, suffered a complete fiasco. However, none of them was tied to this circus, and in the public statements the companies indicated that they had paid tens of millions of levs in interest to the Bulgarian Development Bank, the loans are paid regularly and were fully secured.

The genesis of Kiril Petkov turned out to be very interesting, which perhaps well explains his behavior in the first days of his "ministry". He first appeared on the Bulgarian scene in 2008, when he was promoted by "Capital" of the now accused Ivo Prokopiev.

Petkov was then portrayed as a 27-year-old "successful businessman" who graduated from Harvard but returned to Bulgaria with a 60m-euro project to build a technology park in the outskirts of Sofia. A small detail is that Petkov did not actually graduate from Harvard University, but has only a two-year master's degree from Harvard Business School, but that is not the most important thing.

Simultaneously with the implementation of the project for the park (according to public information, the investors in it are the billionaire Michael Karsh and Kiril Petkov himself, and in 2018, despite the colossal investment in it, it was sold for less than BGN 20 million), Petkov started teaching in Sofia University and together with his friend Asen Vassilev - now Minister of Finance, as well as with the support of "America for Bulgaria", trained 60 students a year, who received a certificate from "Harvard".

Probably around this time Petkov started another business - with probiotics, and according to him he cultivated Lactobacillus bulgaricus in carrot juice. He claims that this business was successful, most of the production went for export and even Oprah Winfrey herself became a fan of his goods.

Whether this is the case can hardly be verified with certainty, although it is clear from the reports of the companies Proviotic AD and Smartbio OOD published in the commercial register that their revenues are not great at all.
 

Rumen Radev apointted to friend of Kiril Petkov and Asen Vasilev in his caretaker government

In January 2017 Petkov became the founder of the "Yes, Bulgaria" party, a project that media reports say was managed by Prokopiev. This fact shone from the famous Argo transcripts, in which the backstage admitted that he was making his own political project, for which "there is no left, no right."

Moreover, Petkov is not an ordinary member of this party, but participates in its Executive Council - the highest body, along with Hristo Ivanov, Antoaneta Tsoneva, Ivo Mirchev, Nadezhda Yordanova and others, the common denominator of which is that they are all close to Prokopiev. 


 

Kiril Petkov is an active member of "Yes, Bulgaria"
 

Kiril Petkov and Hristo Ivanov 

Now his party members are trumpeting that Petkov had left the party and "Yes Bulgaria" had nothing to do with his current appointment. However, this is undoubtedly a chewing gum for naive people, because even if Petkov is no longer formally a member of the executive council, nothing in his behavior shows that he has distinguished himself from the policy of his former colleagues. Nor that he severed ties with Prokopiev - simply because "Capital" and "Dnevnik" have never ceased to be a convenient advertising platform for his business.

A curious detail from Petkov's life was mentioned a few days ago by Traicho Traikov - former Minister of Economy in the Borisov 1 cabinet. According to Traikov, even then he used Kiril Petkov as an "expert" at the ministry. That is, it turns out in practice that Petkov worked for the first government of GERB. Although Borissov himself revealed that Prokopiev had installed 5-6 ministers in his first cabinet (who apparently brought with them other "experts" from the "Capital" circle), the businessman and the current minister prefers to remain silent about this fact in his CV.

Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain his regular march on the yellow cobblestones last year, waving protest posters with hybrid messages and fake news aimed at Boyko Borissov.
 

Kiril Petkov is participating in the protests against the Borisov gouverment

However, one thing is indisputable - that for many years Petkov has been the favorite of the people around Ivo Prokopiev, and he himself regularly appears in "Capital" and its associated media, from his position as a "successful" businessman in our country and in the West. There are dozens of articles, interviews and commercials with his participation, and his image as a "Harvard" graduate has been carefully polished for more than a decade.

And while he probably had to wait longer than his mentors had anticipated to gain power, the time to cash in on his image has apparently come in 2021, when he took the post of caretaker economy minister.

Of course, the fact that Petkov immediately started the same mantras that the backstage has been waving for a long time makes a clear statement that his appointment as a minister is not accidental. Knowing well the tactics of Ivo Prokopiev and the "Lamb's Heads", which privatized appetizing bites of the state economy in the years of the "Transition", it is no wonder that raising a media smoke with imaginary and false suggestions aims at future concealment of deals made with the government. a button from the Minister of Economy, perhaps in the service of the Capital Circle.

Yordan Tsonev also hinted at this, according to whom the MRF will closely monitor whether the economic team of the caretaker government (understand Petkov and Vassilev) will make any "debt issues", a favorite activity of "Harvard graduates".

In any case, the power career of the "Harvard" graduate has already begun, and whether it will end in fiasco or not remains to be seen. The only surprise is that the new yuppie was "planted" in Radev's caretaker government, dominated by generals and people from the Socialist Party.

But Prokopiev's request "no left, no right" also explains this paradox, and what is the behind-the-scenes agreement between the Capital circle and the "red" president elected by the BSP votes, and most importantly - remains to be seen why the latter gave the strategic for the economy post to people close to a man accused of serious financial crimes.

Remains only the hop that, again, everything will not be at the expense of the ordinary citizens, who are tired of "successful" young people with shiny images and slick bangs to get rich on their backs or worse, to serve behind-the-scenes interests.