During a parliamentary hearing, Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev outlined ongoing checks related to the air travel of Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) leader Delyan Peevski, who is under U.S. sanctions. The focus of the investigation, he said, is to establish who accompanied the politician on private flights, how those trips were financed, and whether there were any indications of improper influence.
Further reading: Bulgarian Oligarch Peevski Took 227 Flights from Sofia, 181 on Private Jets
One of the key claims concerns a flight on April 5, 2024, from Sofia to Dubai, on which Peevski reportedly traveled together with Desislava Atanasova, who had been elected as a constitutional judge only a few months earlier. Demerdzhiev described the combination as raising institutional questions, noting that “in any democratic country, such a situation would raise serious questions.” He also stated that Peevski’s travel network includes businessmen, among them Alexander Staliyski, with whom a joint flight allegedly took place in 2019, and arms trader Dobrin Ivanov, who had a reservation but did not board.
According to the Interior Minister, the broader dataset under review covers travel from 2018 to the present, during which Peevski reportedly made 227 departures from Sofia Airport, including 181 private charter flights. Many of these routes, he said, involved stopovers in Istanbul before continuing to other destinations such as Greece and Dubai. Authorities have requested information from Turkey, Greece, and the United Arab Emirates regarding passengers and final destinations.
