As early as February 2017, „Trud“ newspaper noticed how The Capital Circle was testing in action the possibility of a political career for the current provisional Minister of Economy Kiril Petkov. This is what the editor-in-chief of "Trud" Petyo Blaskov wrote in a commentary.
Petkov's increased media presence on BTV at the time increased our interest. He commented on political issues surrounding the establishment of the “Da Bulgaria“ political party. At the same time the television advertised a probiotic product for the American market, created by a Harvard graduate`s company.

Petkov surprisingly left the leadership of "Da Bulgaria" after the fiasco of the city right movement in the early parliamentary elections in March 2017. There are claim that this happened because Hristo Ivanov, Antoaneta Tsoneva and Ivo Mirchev have had doubts that Petkov could displace them from the top of the newly created political GMO. It is far more likely that Petkov was deliberately withdrawn from the forefront of „Da Bulgaria“ in order to be used at a later stage as an "unencumbered" politician. This have happened with his appointment by President Rumen Radev as Minister of Economy.

Political engineer Ivo Prokopiev in a series of public appearances in recent months has stubbornly sought to avoid his association with Kiril Petkov. They knew each other vaguely because Petkov was an author at „Capital“ newspaper, Prokopiev claims, but they had common views on the country's development. Prokopiev is well aware that the political value of Kiril Petkov will fall if he is seen as a representative of the pseudo-technocratic wing of the "deep state", which has covered the entire state apparatus through networks of political GMOs, non-governmental organizations, media and economic circles.
From left to right: Kiril Petkov, Nikolay Denkov and Asen Vassilev

At the end of March 2020, today's provisional ministers Kiril Petkov, Nikolay Denkov and Asen Vassilev actively launched the idea of Ivo Prokopiev for mass testing of Bulgarians for coronavirus with the fast blood test, which were rejected as unfit. The mass testing plan would cost the budget about half a billion levs.

That is why the provisional Minister of Economy commented on his participation in the creation of the "Da Bulgaria" (Yes, Bulgaria) political project atypically shyly. However, his participation in public trials inevitably leaves traces. And this makes ridiculous all the attempts of Prokopiev and Petkov to deny their close cooperation. Petkov is the political avatar of Prokopiev, who in the last 20 years has invariably participated in the government of the country, but without direct political representation and without running in person.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, in March-April last year, The Capital Circle opposed to the lock-out in the country, as Prokopiev himself said in his program article "the battle for the economy is also a battle for life." Prokopiev launched two theses - the first - the state to finance mass testing; and the second - banks to take a leading role in providing aid to businesses. Shortly after the publication of Prokopiev`s article, the trio of Kiril Petkov, Asen Vassilev and Nikolay Denkov, through a very active media campaign, insisted on urgent allocation of money for mass testing of the entire Bulgarian population.

An important detail is that this had to be done with the first rapid blood tests for antibodies, which use was discontinued due to the high percentage of inaccurate results. The other important detail is that this would have cost the state - about half a billion levs. Prokopiev's vision for providing unsecured bank loans for business recovery from the pandemic today is being implemented in practice by Kiril Petkov and Asen Vassilev, through funding from the Bulgarian Development Bank. It is not surprising to which companies these loans go.

Petkov, Vassilev and Denkov turned out to be the main part of the authors of the projects for Restoration Plan who The Capital Circle`s insisted on the former rulers to implement. Although this did not happen last year, not surprisingly, these projects are now present in the provisional government's draft of the Recovery Plan. At the same time, Bulgaria continues to be one of the two countries in the European Union that has not yet presented its Recovery Plan in Brussels, while some of the other countries have already received the first part of the financial aid.

For now, Prokopiev's plan seems to work. After three months at the helm of the Ministry of Economy, dozens of uncritical interviews in which Kiril Petkov appears as a lecturer at seminars on multilevel marketing of probiotics, the product of political engineering is ready for the next step. It does not seem accidental that he was launched as the face of a future "presidential" party, and even as the prime minister of a draft cabinet, which The Capital Circle very much hopes will happen in the 46th Parliament through "Izpravi se, BG! Nie idvame (Stand Up BG! We are coming).

But one cannot escape from his oun past, especially if part of it can be problematic. It turns out that the dual citizenship of Kiril Petkov is just such a case. At the moment, Petkov is seen as a soft-boiled egg that must be preserved in every way. It does not matter that this is done in gross violation of constitutionally established norms. It is clear to any person that Petkov's renunciation of Canadian citizenship does not mean that it is automatically terminated. At least, because there is a cumbersome and long procedure for this to happen.

So while he was acting Bulgarian minister, it seems Petkov was still a citizen of another country. The case is also a matter of principle. In other situations, politicians were deprived of their rights because they had dual citizenship - in 1995 the Constitutional Court terminated the mandate of elected MP George Ganchev because of Bulgarian and American citizenship, although he promptly refused his US passport.

It is a problem that incredible efforts have been made in sweeping aside the case, because once again it shows unprincipleness. And there is no doubt that Ivo Prokopiev, as Canada's longtime consul in Bulgaria, although his secretary take the office since 2019, plays a leading role in providing the necessary document to pull up Kiril Petkov from the scandal. Not only Petkov's "bright" political future is at stake here, but also the decisions of the provisional government, where The Capital Circle has a leading role in the economic sphere.

Actions have also been taken in the media to provide an information fog over Petkov's Canadian citizenship. It is remarkable how 13 months later the media revived the story of police violence against several protesters, without the new footage showing anything different and that had not been seen since July 10 last year. The scandal with the dual citizenship of the current Minister of Economy, which by all international journalistic standards would be leading news, is currently presented in Bulgaria more than succinctly.

Even if it turns out that the Canadian Foreign Minister has acted unprecedentedly, and even retrospectively, to resolve the scandal with the Canadian citizenship of the Bulgarian Minister in an instant, the case will leave a stain at the image of Prokopiev's multilevel politician - Kiril Petkov .