Bulgaria Agri Minister to Bring Action in Court over Tsar's Forests

Bulgaria Agriculture Minister, Miroslav Naydenov, is set to bring an action in the Sofia District Court for the restoration of Tsar and former Prime Minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s forests.

Agricultural Ministry experts announced the move Wednesday. This comes after Bulgaria’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture and head of the State Forestry Agency, Georgi Kostov, stated Monday that 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.

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.

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.

The Deputy Minister admited Monday that 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.