Bulgaria Political Briefing: Bulgarian Government Is Shaken by Series of Political Scandals, Kompromats and Accusations Evgeniy Kandilarov

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 31, No. 1 (BG)

July 2020

Bulgaria political briefing: Bulgarian Government is Shaken by Series of Political Scandals, Kompromats and Accusations Evgeniy Kandilarov

1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin

Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01

Bulgarian Government is Shaken by Series of Political Scandals, Kompromats and Accusations

During the last month, Bulgarian society has been shaken by several severe political scandals, which raise many questions and create an extremely heavy public atmosphere. The questions that arise are not only related to whether the scandals are caused by falsified compromising information or by completely reliable facts, but mostly by the fact that a large part of the society has the feeling that Bulgarian politics is something discredited and unworthy, in which corruption and trading in influence are the most natural thing. The first scandal is related to the name of Vasil Bojkov, a former gambling mogul who was considered to be the wealthiest Bulgarian with assets worth between 1.5 and 3 billion leva. Bojkov lost his gambling empire in early 2020 when Parliament outlawed private lotteries and was charged with evasion of more than 700 million leva in gambling licensing fees, money laundering, extortion, bribery, murder, rape, leading an organized crime group since 2014, trading in influence, and unlawful possession of cultural assets. He left the country before the full-scale crackdown against him and turned into a fugitive from justice, refusing to return to Bulgaria from the United Arab Emirates where, following three weeks in prison after being arrested on an Interpol Red Notice on Bulgaria's request, he has been a free man with resident status. In a series of disclosures which he started publishing on Facebook in May, Bojkov alleged that he had been forced by the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and the Financial Minister Vladislav Goranov to pay them a 20 per cent cut of his business proceeds, that he had tried to sell half of his lottery business to a Czech company for 1 billion leva, but the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister caught wind of it and tried to make him transfer a majority interest in it to a person named by them, and that they had attacked his business when he declined to do their bidding. Bojkov said he had formally alerted the prosecution service, and Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev confirmed that the alert had been assigned to a prosecutor for investigation. According to the purported alert, between 2017 and the end of 2019 Bojkov paid 60 million leva personally to the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister as they demanded and instructed him to do so. To prove that, he announced that he is ready to testify before a prosecutor and to present evidence including documents, bank statements, CCTV footage, photos and witness testimony. Bojkov gave a telephone interview for bTV on May 8, urging Vladislav Goranov to resign as Finance Minister because he either connived or ignored legislative amendments initiated by

GERB thus enabling Bojkov's scratch-card lotteries to pay lower licensing fees than the State- owned Bulgarian Sports Totalizator. Reacting to the interview, Goranov told a news briefing at Parliament later that day that ever since he entered the gambling business, Bojkov or his employees violated the Gambling Act by misdeclaring and underpaying fees. The Finance Minister said he does not believe that he can be blamed for Bojkov's employees misapplying the Gambling Act. Actually the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance responded to these public accusations with contempt saying that they will not make any additional comments in response to statements made by someone who owes the Exchequer 700 million leva. While Vassil Bozhkov continues to accuse high ranking officials and specifically Prime Minister Boyko Borissov of racketeering tens of millions of him over the years, two alarming files leaked to the public. One was a tape on which a voice, indistinguishable from the PM`s, could be heard. The other – photos of the PM sleeping in his bedroom, a gun on his nightstand. Separate close ups of said nightstand show the drawers full with 500-euro bills. The tapes, though, are not as easy to describe, and just as hard to explain Borissov`s account of it. He first said the recordings are a faked montage from real recordings. This, of course is easily verifiable but - again – the PM did not wish the matter investigated in the beginning and no prosecutor took up the matter for six days. In the recording, the voice apparently is on the phone with someone. The recording is seven minutes long. It references events from last spring and is likely made around 24-25 April. The voice is on an all-encompassing rant: about the probe by the Commission for Financial Supervision into Eurohold last year – which in fact did take place. It looked into Eurohold`s capacity to manage CEZ – one of the three power distributors in the country. The voice says he ordered the probe apparently in retaliation: “ … I will smash his face, [since] he ignores me.” He moves on to the subject of a then-Deputy Ecology Minister Alexander Manolev. He was at the center of an EU funds fraud, which the investigative news site bivol.bg uncovered at the time. Manolev did indeed get charged several days after the alleged recording. “Manolev is a goner. We`ll charge him today or tomorrow. We`ll crush him. I warned him.”, the voice says. The man on the tape also talks about the Parliament Chairwoman, Tsveta Karayancheva and call her “a stupid cunt” and also that she is moronic. The voice covers a number of other topics and uses a lot of foul language. The questions here are clear: if the tapes are authentic and will we found out? If they are – even partially so – it would appear that the PM has direct control or at least some significant power or direction over institutions, which do not – on paper – report to him.

Regarding the tapes - the PM said he wouldn`t file for an investigation, as there is “no bad publicity”, as he put it. Which raises yet another question: if the tapes are faked, as the PM claims, he wouldn`t want this gross manipulation and attack – against him personally and professionally – to be uncovered? Or does he know who did it? Or the tapes are authentic? Of course, investigating such an instance – both as an attempt against the PM and the possibility that the tapes are authentic and he did say what he did – is not up to the PM. The Prosecutor`s Office caught up to this fact as well, although almost a full week later and an investigation of some kind is looking into the tapes. Regarding the photos, the situation is also quite disturbing. Some of the pictures showed a pistol on a bedside table of the Prime Minister and several stacks of 500-euro notes and gold bars in the opened bedside drawer. Borisov said the photo in which he is depicted sleeping in the prime minister’s residence could be real. As to the other images, he said they could be manipulated but refused to elaborate until they are investigated. Asked who was behind the kompromats, Borissov named his former number two in the GERB party, Tzvetan Tzvetanov, the country’s president, Rumen Radev, the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party, and the leaders of two new political forces – Maya Manolova, the former national ombudsman, and TV showman Slavi Trifonov. Borissov said the attacks against him were inspired from abroad, alluding that they profit Russia. He said the reason for these attacks was that there were upcoming “geopolitical” decisions in July, and that this made his detractors nervous. He did not elaborate. These three political scandals that emerged only within a month rise many serious questions. One of them is If these recordings and photos are authentic, how is the PM – one of the most guarded statesmen in the country – so easily susceptible to violations of his privacy? If the materials are manipulated – which the PM claims is true for most of them – than who made them, and why? The content of the tapes especially is highly damaging to the institution of the prime minister, and are not – as the PM tries to play it – a personal attack against a private citizen from unnamed enemies. Regarding the photos all international media were commenting the photos of Boyko Borisov slumbering in bed next to a Glock 9mm handgun and a drawer full of €500 bills and gold bars. The most disturbing was that the photographs were authenticated as genuine by experts for some investigative news websites. So some respected International media published materials questioning why Mr. Borisov, a centre-right political leader who is an ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel, appears in these photos to be living like a B-movie gangster, keeping firearms, cash and gold at his bed stand as he sleeps.

Regardless the authenticity of all the compromising materials against Bulgarian Prime Minister, they completely correspond to a public secret or conviction, Bulgarians long since share. An impression that has become trivial. The democratic institutions are rotten and used as tools for those in power to go after enemies and protect friends. The system of democratic institutions and procedures have been captured and utilized by a group of exclusive state and private actors, and with GERB at the helm for over a decade, and no real parliamentary opposition, the process of state capture is almost uninterrupted. One thing is for sure. While such political scandals are taking place in Bulgaria, Bulgarian society will become increasingly convinced of the truth of such a public secret, which will increasingly brake down any possible link between people on the one hand and politics and politicians on the other. This will totally undermine the trust in politicians and the political system, which is detrimental to any democratic society.