Bulgaria Spots Host of Fictional Macedonian Dwellers

The town of Kyustendil | Photo by: Nenko Lazarov

The discovery of several hundred fictional Macedonian residents in a Bulgarian town has highlighted the problem of Macedonians falsely registering as Bulgarian residents in order to claim Bulgarian passports.

These documents then allow them to travel and work abroad.

The oddity in the western Bulgarian town was discovered by chance when the fictional residents appeared on voting lists for a local municipal referendum on Sunday. But none of them voted, Bulgaria's DarikNews news portal said.

A checkup then revealed 366 Macedonians registered as living in a single apartment in a two-storey building on Ivaylo street. Another 369 were found listed as residents of another apartment in the St Krum Zarev Street.

Kyustendil municipality said it had informed the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice for them to determine whether the law had been broken.

One of the owners of the listed addresses, pensioner Verka Grigorova, told DarikNews that “patriotic reasons” had prompted her to sign the documents, verifying the residence of the Macedonians at that address.

Grigorova named the mediator in the whole process as Blago Penov, a Macedonian from the central Macedonian town of Veles.

Penov told the same media outlet that he had been trying to help the Macedonians navigate the legal labyrinth in Bulgaria and had been acting for the best motives.

"These people are all Bulgarian by ancestry," he said. "They registered in Kyustendil for practical reasons because it is close to the [Macedonian] border."

Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007. Since then, Bulgarians have enjoyed the right to travel and work in the European Union. 

Macedonia, on the other hand, is still only an EU candidate state. Last year, Brussels allowed Macedonians to enter the EU's visa-free Schnegen zone but only for tourism and travel purposes.

“Travel is far easier with a Bulgarian passport,” a Macedonian businessman in Skopje with a Bulgarian passport told Balkan Insight. He said he needed the extra passport for his trading firm.

"With a Macedonian passport, you need to prove that you have enough money for your stay [in the EU] and that you do not plan to work illegally there," he added.

In an interview on Macedonian TV last September, the former Bulgarian minister for the diaspora, Bozidar Dimitrov, said that some 60,000 Macedonians had taken out Bulgarian citizenships over the past two decades, mainly lured by the better working and travel conditions of Bulgarian nationals.

Bulgaria's embassy in Skopje said it did not have any data to hand on how many Macedonian citizens had applied for, or received, Bulgarian citizenship in 2009, or in 2010, after the EU visa wall against Macedonians came down.

Macedonia and Bulgaria have generally good relations, but Bulgaria has traditionally viewed all Macedonians as ethnic Bulgarians. Many believe that this sentiment explains why Bulgaria adopts a sympathetic line towards Macedonians seeking double citizenship.