March 29 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian tobacco group Bulgartabac Holding [BUL:57B] said on Tuesday it is temporarily shutting down its cigarette making factory Sofia-BT due to sharp decrease in orders and negative media campaign.
Earlier this month, Bulgartabac said it would stop exports to the Middle East as of April 1, blaming negative media publicity for a sharp drop in orders to the company. It said then that the move would result in 400 job cuts mainly in Sofia-BT, equal to 8% of the group's staff number.
However, labour unions claim the layoffs are illegal and plan to protest the job cuts in front of the parliament building on Wednesday.
In February, controversial media mogul and member of parliament Delyan Peevski said he would exit Bulgartabac citing attempts to intentionally discredit the company through the involvement of his name for political intrigues.
About a month later, Tobacco Investment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NSN Investment, which is 90%-owned by Peevski, sold its 5% stake in Bulgartabac via the stock exchange. However, the majority owner of Bulgartabac remains unclear, as it is hidden by offshore registered companies.
Peevski, whose appointment as national security chief for a day in 2014 triggered widespread protests against corruption, has been allegedly related also to collapsed Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank), to Bulgaria's largest telecom operator by revenue, BTC, as well as to various businesses that have been winning large public contracts. Bulgaria's government has recently scrapped a number of suspicious public procurement orders, many of them linked to Peevski firms.