EditThe failure of the EU’s аnti-corruption еffort in Bulgaria is costing billions
The Anti-Corruption Commission was abolished last January after the authorities admitted that it could be used as an instrument of political repression
Bulgaria joined the European Union burdened by serious problems related to organised crime and corruption, while promising Brussels that these issues would gradually be addressed over time. However, that has not happened.
Nineteen years after accession, the authorities in Sofia effectively acknowledged their failure by dismantling the Anti-Corruption Commission (CPC), an institution created under pressure from the European Commission. The authorities admitted that the body itself had become a tool of corruption in the hands of political and criminal interests.
This investigation by EUalive.net seeks to explain, through data and eyewitness accounts, how Bulgaria arrived at this troubling situation, which now threatens the very foundations of the European project in the country.
In the summer of 2025, Blagomir Kotsev, the mayor of one of Bulgaria’s three largest cities, was arrested in a high-profile operation carried out by the Anti-Corruption Commission, an institution established with strong European backing.
The ugly arrest of the first honest mayor of Varna explained
Kotsev was one of the few opposition mayors in the country. He compared the actions taken against him by the Bulgarian authorities to the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime in Turkey.
Ultimately, the mayor of Varna spent five months in detention before being released. The case triggered large-scale public protests across Bulgaria. Later, Boyko Borissov, leader of the GERB party, which was then in government, acknowledged that his government had fallen from power precisely because of the political fallout generated by Kotsev’s arrest.
After decades of European pressure for anti-corruption reforms, the situation in Bulgaria appears to have deteriorated further. The Anti-Corruption Commission was abolished in January 2026 after the authorities themselves admitted that it could be used as an instrument of political and financial repression.
The scandals surrounding the Commission prompted the European Commission to effectively block the disbursement of more than €300 million under Bulgaria’s Recovery and Resilience Plan. The Renew Europe group in the European Parliament also intervened, describing Kotsev’s arrest as politically motivated and organising a debate on the state of the rule of law in Bulgaria.
The liberals were the first to call for the suspension of EU funding for Bulgaria. Yet these financial consequences may prove to be the least damaging aspect of the affair. To date, Bulgaria has failed to secure significant convictions for high-level corruption. Instead, individuals targeted by the country’s controversial anti-corruption institutions are preparing costly legal claims against one of the EU’s poorest member states.
“Without any doubt, I will sue the state once the criminal proceedings against me have concluded,” Blagomir Kotsev told EUalive.
“The Anti-Corruption Commission, along with other institutions in Bulgaria, has been transformed into an instrument for removing political opponents and inconvenient individuals. Such anti-corruption bodies are necessary, but they must perform the functions for which they were originally established,” he said.
According to Kotsev, European institutions have already clearly recognised that the way Bulgaria’s Anti-Corruption Commission operated was fundamentally at odds with European values.
He argues that the country’s main problem remains the unreformed prosecution service and the declining standards within the criminal courts, which have allowed repressive practices and unlawful decisions to emerge.
“My case paralysed the administration of Varna, a city of more than 350,000 inhabitants, because its mayor was held in detention for half a year. When a mayor is removed from office, almost all key municipal activities come to a standstill,” Kotsev said.
A year after his arrest, Kotsev learned that one of the anonymous witnesses in the case against him – a Ukrainian national named Oleg Nevzorov – was one of the two secret witnesses whose testimony forms part of the prosecution’s case against him.
The mayor says he was arrested shortly after filing a report with Bulgaria’s security services regarding Nevzorov’s alleged links to multiple construction projects in the city. In 2026, the Ukrainian national is investigated about the construction of a vast illegal settlement near Varna.
Did the Bulgarian authorities allow an illegal town to rise near Varna?
But the CPC was only one of several anti-corruption bodies created over the years. Another key institution is the Commission for the Forfeiture of Illegally Acquired Assets.
A failure costing billions
An EUalive review of data from another key anti-corruption institution, the Commission for the Forfeiture of Illegally Acquired Assets, shows that the value of frozen assets has fallen by half in recent years. While suspicious financial assets worth nearly €2 billion were under court-ordered seizure in 2023, that figure has now fallen to approximately €1 billion.
The dramatic decline reflects a de facto acknowledgement of the Commission’s ineffective performance. Over the years, the institution repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to target critics of those in power.
In 2018, Ivo Prokopiev, co-owner of the government-critical Economedia media group, saw assets worth more than €100 million frozen by the Commission. The case bore strong similarities to an attempt to punish him for the investigative reporting published by his media outlets. Five years later, the Commission itself withdrew its claims, while Prokopiev successfully sued the state over what he described as judicial repression.
Just two years later, assets worth nearly €1 billion belonging to online gambling businessman Vassil Bozhkov were frozen. Bozhkov is currently pursuing legal claims against Bulgaria for damages of roughly the same value.
Legal experts predict that Bulgaria is facing an avalanche of lawsuits from individuals who became targets of the country’s anti-corruption institutions, while the authorities ultimately failed to prove either corruption or criminal conduct.
EUalive’s analysis illustrates the extraordinary inefficiency of the Commission for the Forfeiture of Illegally Acquired Assets.
During its 22 years of existence, the institution succeeded in permanently confiscating only around €100 million through court proceedings as proceeds of crime or unlawfully acquired assets. During the same period, it consumed approximately €120 million in public funding.
The misguided mindset of the Bulgarian political class
EUalive also spoke to lawyer Alexander Kashumov from the Access to Information Programme, who was part of the first European expert panel tasked with designing effective anti-corruption institutions in Bulgaria.
“As early as 2009, we identified the directions in which anti-corruption efforts should develop and the institutional reforms that were needed. Some of the measures we proposed remain unimplemented to this day,” Kashumov said.
He notes that Bulgaria still lacks ethical codes governing the conduct of senior politicians and does not carry out integrity audits within the public administration.
“We warned that Bulgaria’s political environment could create a monster endowed with enormous powers and vulnerable to political abuse. That is exactly what happened. The Anti-Corruption Commission fought against access to information in much the same way that the prosecution service continues to do today, despite the fact that combating corruption without transparency and access to information is simply inconceivable,” he said.
According to Kashumov, abolishing the Anti-Corruption Commission without first conducting a thorough analysis of its failures was itself a mistake. He also points to earlier examples of poor decision-making. In 2019, the entire leadership of the Conflict of Interest Prevention Commission was dismissed despite broad recognition from civil society that it had been performing effectively.
“They removed the people as soon as they saw they were actually doing their job. Overall, anti-corruption policy in Bulgaria resembles moving in circles rather than making any genuine progress,” he said.
Kashumov believes the core problem lies in what he describes as the flawed thinking of Bulgarian politicians.
“Bulgarian politicians believe that if the person leading these institutions is dependent on them, they will be able to do whatever they want while they are in power. The reality is different. For everyone, including politicians and political parties, it is better to have a functioning system of integrity and accountability. One person governs today, but tomorrow they may lose power and become a victim of the very system they helped maintain.”
Kashumov predicts that the number of compensation claims against the state for the actions of compromised anti-corruption institutions will continue to rise.
“We must all recognise the scale of this problem and finally bring an end to it. The short-term mentality of Bulgarian politicians has to come to an end.”
Bulgaria still needs a new anti-corruption body
According to former caretaker Justice Minister Andrey Yankulov, who has long advocated reform of the Anti-Corruption Commission, Bulgaria still requires such an institution.
“Even if the prosecution service were reformed in the most perfect manner imaginable, that would not mean the criminal justice system would suddenly function perfectly. The prosecution service is not the only problem within criminal justice,” said Yankulov, a former prosecutor who spent many years working with the Anti-Corruption Fund investigative organisation.
In his view, Bulgaria’s anti-corruption reforms have consistently failed because of the country’s weak institutional environment.
“The Anti-Corruption Commission was described as a political weapon, and that was used as the justification for abolishing it. But it was no more of a political weapon than many other state institutions. Why was the tax authority not abolished? Why was the prosecution service not abolished? Are those institutions not even more powerful instruments than the Anti-Corruption Commission?” Yankulov asked.
During his tenure as justice minister, his team drafted legislation for the creation of a new Anti-Corruption Commission featuring safeguards designed to guarantee the political independence of its leadership. The proposal is now in the hands of the Progressive Bulgaria party, which won a parliamentary majority in the April elections.
According to Yankulov, the previous parliamentary majority, dominated by Boyko Borissov’s GERB party and the DPS party associated with Delyan Peevski, who has been sanctioned by both the United States and the United Kingdom for corruption, abolished the old Commission because it had become politically toxic.
“They concluded that the existence of the Anti-Corruption Commission in its previous form generated political costs for those who exercised real control over it. But the Commission itself was merely an executor. It never had the decisive importance that many attributed to it,” Yankulov said.
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This article is part of the Bulgaria International Journalism Fellowship (BIJF), and implemented by AUBG’s Center for Information, Democracy, and Citizenship (CIDC).
Caption: Varna Mayor Blagomir Kotsev is escorted by court security officers at the Varna District Court during a hearing on his pre-trial detention [BGNES/I.Y.]
Updated: June 2, 2026 - 05:41
