Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)
Bulgaria's ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg and his sister, who seek to regain ownership on the Krichim former royal residence, have officially lodged a lawsuit against regional governor Todor Petkov.
Petkov has refused to restore the Krichim residence to Simeon-Saxe Coburg and Maria Luisa, claiming the papers they provided to prove their rightful ownership on the land do not coincide with the data in the municipal archives.
The names listed in the documents the former PM Saxe-Coburg provided, do not exist at the property in question, according to a check by the city hall's agriculture and forests service, which shows large disparities between the inventory the ex-king handed and the current status of the residence.
At its first hearing, the administrative court of Bulgaria's second largest city of Plovdiv ordered a detailed expertise of the property, the maps and the documents, which is to be carried out by November 15, the date of the next hearing.
Simeon Saxe-Coburg and Maria Luisa claim in their lawsuit that their ownership of the Krichim residence cannot be litigated; still the state, represented by Todor Petkov, does it. The reason is that there is no law for the restitution of the property of the Bulgarian royal family, which was seized in 1947 by the communists.
This is the first case related to the former PM's demands for restitution of royal property to enter court.
Last year, Sofia prosecutors launched two investigations into the restitution of property to Saxe-Coburg. The move was triggered by right-wing Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB), who urged ministers to revoke a controversial document that backed the property return.
Their findings were that the restitution of assets formerly owned by the royal family was legal, but not legitimate. This was based on a report which an ad-hoc commission was asked to prepare to identify the seized and handed back property of the families of former kings Ferdinand I and Boris III and their heirs.
The report said the restitution of property to Simeon Saxe-Coburg was based on a ruling of the Constitutional court, dated 1998. The question remained however whether a Constitutional court ruling was enough to begin the restitution. If not, the restitution could be challenged in court.
Lawyers, however, have repeatedly argued that the MPs should not be passing the buck to the magistrates and should first adopt a law on royal restitution.
The report covered the royal palaces of Vrana, Tsarska Bistritsa and Sitnyakovo, the summer villa called Sarugyol, built about 100 years ago by King Ferdinand, houses in the villages of Banya and Slatina and forests in the Rila mountain.
The former king, who was forced to flee in 1946 after the communist takeover, returned to Bulgaria in the late 1990s, when the family property was handed back.
He then won the parliamentary polls in 2001 on the strength of his name alone in his first foray into politics, making some audacious promises in the process.
He spent four years as prime minister, failing to deliver on most of them, but his party still managed to win enough votes to become an important force in the current legislature and part of the ruling coalition.
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