Real estate investment company Anamar Development, had its ownership structure changed through fraud, owners of the company said.

Through the use of fake documents, the court registration of the board of directors of the company had been changed, Dnevnik daily said. Management of the company had been in the hands of Jorge Constantinou Franco, Yoanis Atanasios Kolatas and Zoubouliya Anastatsios Constantinou. According to a decision of the Sofia City Court from November 12 2007, they have been replaced by Roumen Telbizov, Georgi Kostadinov and Getsko Dimitrov.

According to the former members of the board of directors, the documents regarding the general assembly have disappeared from the company records.
The owners of the company found out about the change of the board of directors by accident, when they applied for a verification of the current status of their company.

According to Franco, the company had been stolen most likely in order to be able to sell the real estate it owned. Anamar Development was said to own land in Sofia worth around 20 million euro. Until now, the new board of directors had not sold a single piece of real estate, Dnevnik quoted Anamar as saying.
"The real board of directors and shareholders of the company have never had relations with these people, have never taken part in a general assembly with shareholders and did not elect Bulgarian citizens as members of the board of directors," a media statement from the former board of directors said.

Franco said he thought it was inadmissible for a court to register a change of this kind without questioning the validity of the information. How would a company with foreign shareholders, at once transfer its entire management to people who aren't even from Sofia, Dnevnik daily quoted him as saying.

From the three new members of the board of directors, Dnevnik managed to contact only Telbizov, who was registered as the managing director of Anamar. Dnevnik said he answered most questions with "I don't know" or "Leave me alone". He did say he knew about the case, but refused to comment it and said more information would be made available on December 10.

Sofia City Court has said it would comment the case later this week, because the chairman of the court Svetlin Mihailov was not available.

To prevent sales of property of Anamar, the owners of the company had sent letters to all notaries in Sofia, with an appeal not to verify any deals in the name of the three Bulgarians. The letter described how, with fake documents and the records of proceedings of a general assembly which never took place, ownership of the company had been changed.

Franko said that, after the change of the registration, the new board of directors had requested a tax valuation of property in the Mladost neighbourhood and had started a procedure for the preparation of a plan. Most likely they were preparing to sell the property, Franco said.
The terrain was to be used for the construction of a retail centre.

According to legal experts, buyers of real estate of a company in a situation like Anamar, should not have any problems, even if the board of directors would be declared illegitimate. Bulgarian law requires that buyers act in good faith, that is, that they could not have known about the illegal status of the board of directors, Dnevnik daily said.

Legal experts told Dnevnik the old board of directors had two options to contest the current situation. The first one would be to file a complaint against the decision of the court, which had made the change of court registration.
The second option would be to sue the current board of directors for damages and ask the court for an injunction on the company's real estate.

Franco said he knew about other, similar, cases of theft of real estate companies, which had been owned by foreigners. They lived abroad and could not follow every day what happened with their company, he said.

Anamar Development was founded in 2006. Owners of the company were Greeks, living in Venezuela. The company was owned by San Rafael holding, which invested in different countries, including the US. Anamar did not have a direct office in Bulgaria and was represented by an accountancy.

Research by Dnevnik daily showed that Telbizov, Kostadinov and Dimitrov did not own other companies together. Telbizov was sole owner of four companies, Kostadinov was owner of a 50 per cent share in another company, while Dimitrov was sole owner of ten companies.