Phorum.com.gr

Before August 2017, Gaytandzhieva worked for a Bulgarian newspaper Труд, where she released an article on July 4, 2017 about the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry allegedly corresponding with the Azerbaijani Embassy to Bulgaria on supplying weapons to terrorists in Syria through diplomatic flights. She also claimed that the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and other countries were also involved in the process.

The article by Gaytandzhieva was reposted by Bulgarian print media, 80% of which is controlled by pro-Russian oligarch and member of the Bulgarian Parliament, Delyan Peevski. According to the Bulgarian media outlets, the companies affiliated with Delyan Peevski were involved in the construction of the South Stream, a pipeline projectto transport natural gas of the Russian Federation to Europe via Bulgaria, which actually represented an alternative to a Western-backed proposal for a pipeline, called Nabucco. Nabucco would have reduced Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.

Before working for Труд newspaper, Gaytandzhieva worked for the fourth most-watched Bulgarian television channel TV7, which was controlled by Tsvetan Vassilev, the main shareholder in Corporate Commercial Bank. In 2013, 9.9% of Corpbank shares were purchased by Russia’s largest bank VTB. In 2016, Bulgaria filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against Tsvetan Vassilev, accusing him of using bank funds to acquire property and other assets that led to a subsequent liquidity crisis at the bank. In 2015, TV7 was taken over by Louvrier Investment Company, managedby Pierre Louvrier. The latter has links to Russian oligarch, Konstantin Malofeev who has been sanctioned by the European Union for his “financial support to separatists” in Eastern Ukraine. Simultaneously, Malofeev owns a conservative TV channel in Russia, Царьград ТВ with Aleksandr Dugin being its editor-in-chief in 2015-2016.