Irena Krasteva, the owner “New Bulgarian Media Group” has sought to dispel accusations that her company is owned by murky political and financial circles.

“The ownership of the New Bulgarian Media Group is as clear as possible. The papers say that Irena Krasteva is the sole owner. Everybody can check that in the media register,” declared Krasteva herself on Friday during a round table on media freedom in Bulgaria organized by the German foundation “Konrad Adenauer.”

She further announced that there was a new organization of newspapers in Bulgaria, and that some of the New Bulgarian Media Group papers had joined.

Over the past 2-3 years, Krasteva, who is a former head of the Bulgarian State Lottery “Toto 2”, became notorious by acquiring rather quickly a number of Bulgarian newspapers and cable TV stations.

Her “New Bulgarian Media Group” is believe to be funded by the Corporate Commercial Bank, owned by Tsvetan Vasilev, and to be politically connected with the ethnic Turkish party DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms).

After a demand by the managers of the other Bulgarian media, the Bulgarian Finance Ministry recently revealed that hundreds of millions of BGN of Bulgarian state-owned companies are deposited in the Corporate Commercial Bank, which otherwise has a negligible market share.

Krasteva’s son, Delyan Peevski is currently a Member of Parliament from the DPS party. He was a Deputy Minister of Emergency Situations in the Stanishev government in 2005-2009, and was dismissed at one point by former Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev over violations but was restored to his position with a court decision.

“As much as we talk about certain names, they are technically not committing any crimes at the moment. Mrs. Krasteva is here, we can reprimand her but technically she is not doing anything illegal,” said the Chair of the Bulgarian Electronic Media Council Georgi Lozanov apparently referring to the allegations about Krasteva’s political and financial connections.

“Mr. Lozanov, do you know the old saying about the “morals of the immoral women? I think it is immoral for you to talk about the New Bulgarian Media Group,” Krasteva retorted while declaring that all media owners in Bulgaria must be involved in a public dialogue about press freedom.

Within a very short period of time in 2007-2009, Krasteva’s group acquired a number of newspapers and cable TV stations – including Monitor, Telegraph, Express, Weekend, Politika, Borba, Maritsa, TV 7, BBT TV, and the IPK Rodina publishing house. The New Bulgarian Media Group is believed to have connections with the bnews media of former top bTV channel morning show host Nikolay Barekov.

According to a recent report of the Kapital Daily, all of these media outlets are immensely unprofitable and keep generating enormous losses, with 70% of their advertising revenue coming from the Corporate Commercial Bank; at the same time, Krasteva’s son, MP Peevski is reported to be the person practically running all of these media by deciding on front page articles and editorial policy.

Recently, WAZZ, the German publishers of the two largest Bulgarian papers Trud Daily and 24 Chasa Daily filed a suit with the Competition Protection Commission over what they see as dumping prices because the New Bulgarian Media Group daily papers cost only BGN 0.4 per issue, while their own papers are sold for BGN 0.9 per issue. They believe the NBMG can afford the dumping prices because it gets subsidized by the Corporate Commercial Bank.

The papers and TV stations of the New Bulgarian Media Group are generally known for not voicing any criticism of the DPS party or of the Bulgarian Socialist Party by adopting a “no mention” policy.

They appear to have recently adopted a policy of explicitly and excessively praising the government of the GERB party and Prime Minister Boyko Borisov leading to many to suspect that GERB and the ethnic Turkish party DPS have made a secret grand deal for cooperation.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has denied any such claims saying that the New Bulgarian Media Group papers and TV channels are deliberately praising him excessively in order to fuel such suspicions and to destroy his image by trying to make people believe he is secretly allied with the DPS. Borisov has constantly been portraying the DPS leader Ahmed Dogan as his political archenemy.