Lila Georgieva, a young Bulgarian diplomat who spurred a scandal with erotic photos, has been appointed Bulgaria's consul in Chicago.The news has been reported by eurochicago.com, a Chicago-based ulgarian language media, which also congratulates Georgieva for her birthday, August 5.
In her interview for.... eurochicago.com, Georgieva reveals that she assumed office on July 17, and that this was her first time in the USA.
In the fall of 2007, Georgieva, who was then an official at the Bilateral Consular Relations Department of the Foreign Ministry in Sofia, in charge of consular relations with Greece and Cyprus, spurred a scandal after she published erotic photos in her personal website.
Bulgaria's former Foreign Minister, Ivaylo Kalfin, punished her by postponing her promotion for a year. After the term of the punishment expired, Georgieva applied to become Bulgaria's consul in Brazil, and was approved but gave up the post as she was getting married.
(Novinite.com's past stories about Lila Georgieva are available HERE and HERE)
Georgieva's CV says that she graduated from Sofia University with a degree in political science in 2002, and then she studied the same major as a Master's student at Univercidade Catolica in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2003-2004, she worked at the protocol of the Bulgarian Embassy in Portugal, and then moved back to the Foreign Ministry in Sofia.
Georgieva's appointment as Bulgarian Consul in Chicago apparently was made at the last minute by the former government of Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev on July 9, 2009, four days after Stanishev's BSP lost the Parliamentary Elections to the GERB party.
The last minute appointment of four Ambassadors and five Consuls caused a huge controversy in Bulgaria but Lila Georgieva's appointment to Chicago was not revealed.
"Youth is a very conditional term," Georgieva says when asked about the fact that she had been promoted to General Consul so young. She also explains that she was impressed with "Chicago as a very beautiful city, with various social and cultural institutes, museums, theaters, etc."
