Alexey Alchin, who is to be extradited from Bulgaria to Russia, says he has become an “attractive target” for Russian authorities.
An anti-war sign on an abandoned hotel in the central part of Varna, Bulgaria. Photo: Svetoslav Todorov
Russian Alexey Alchin, a resident of the Bulgarian coastal city of Varna and a regular participant in demonstrations in support of Ukraine, is to be extradited to Russia to face charges of tax evasion and forgery, media reports say.
Supporters of Alchin, who runs a successful business in Russia extracting precious metals from scrap, have called for a protest in Varna on Tuesday against a ruling by the city court on August 8 that his extradition could go ahead.
The ruling came despite current European Union sanctions in place against Russia over its February invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war.
Russian prosecutors accuse Alchin of failing to pay more than 282 million rubles in taxes, or roughly 4.5 million euros.
Varna has a large Russian community and a growing number of Ukrainians since Russia launched its war and thousands of Ukrainian refugees headed to the Bulgarian Black Sea coast in search of shelter.
Alchin, who has lived in Varna for the past five years, had already caught the eye of local media after setting fire to his Russian passport during the first outpouring of support for Ukraine in Varna in late February.
His supporters say the extradition request is purely political.
“I can’t get my head around this,” writer Zachary Karabashliev, who attended a rally on Monday in support of Alchin, wrote on Facebook. “If we, the free citizens, let this thing happen, we’re ceding the judicial institution, our most important one, to Russia’s orbit.”
Alchin says he was first detained in May but released after two weeks and placed under house arrest. He returned to prison on August 1.
In a post on Facebook on August 4, Alchin said his business success “quickly interested those in power.”
“I, as a person who has never hidden my oppositional views, proved to be an attractive target for them,” he said.
Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Alchin said Russia had stepped scrutiny of private businesses, including his own. “Virtually all small and medium-sized businesses in the following years have come under the partial or full control of state structures,” he wrote. “The market of precious metals has begun to be monopolised by the state.”
Calling the court decision “scandalous,” Bulgarian former MP and ambassador Stefan Tafrov compared Alchin’s case to that of a number of Turkish citizens in Bulgaria under the former GERB-led government, who had fallen foul of authorities under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and were extradited to face charges in Turkey.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
