Garvan Walshe: Selective prosecutions of opposition mayors in Bulgaria – is the Euro’s newest member losing its democracy?

Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy adviser to the Conservative Party. He runs Article 7 – Intelligence for democrats

Remember this name: Deylen Peevski.

Bulgarian authorities made a number of arrests last week, supposedly on anti-corruption grounds. Among them was Blagomir Kotsev of the We Continue the Change party, and mayor of Varna, a city famed for its illegal coastal development and links to Russian money.

All those arrested were affiliated with the opposition, whose central promise had been to fight against state capture in Bulgaria and beef up the powers of the Commission for Countering Corruption, under whose auspices the arrests were made.

Now, it is not unheard of for anti-corruption politicians to be caught with their hands in the till. Panamanian president and supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli won election promising to be a scourge of the (decidedly unclean) Panamanian authorities. On taking office he immediately ordered a new presidential plane for himself, on the grounds that the previous one was inferior to a private jet he already owned.

But it is a little surprising, to say the least, for the Commission only to arrest opposition mayors, and nobody acting for the central government, where the sums able to be misappropriated are considerably larger.

It is more surprising still when the make-up of the government is considered. Its main party is GERB, led by Boyko Borissov, former bodyguard to the last Tsar of Bulgaria, (Tsar Simeon II entered democratic Bulgarian politics after the collapse of communism) and served as Prime Minister from 2001 to 2005.

Borissov is a colourful character, and notorious for having photos of his bedside table on which there was a gun, and in the open drawer of which was visible a pile of €500 notes and some little gold bars the size of a mini-Twix, all leaked while he was Prime Minister in 2020.

He claimed this was a set-up and accused the President of sending a “nice woman” to arrange some embarrassing photos, Kompromat  the Russians call it, against him.

Whatever the truth of the situation — whether it was a set-up, or these were indeed the proceeds of his own dodgy dealings — Borissov himself was arrested on corruption charges related to misuse of EU funds in 2022, after a new anti-corruption government led by Kiril Petkov took power.

Borissov was however quickly released because the prosecutor general, Ivan Geshev refused to press on with the investigation. Geshev himself was fired after Borissov’s and Petkov’s parties were pushed into supporting a government so unwieldy it was dubbed the “uncoalition” in 2023 after a series of elections had ended with no clear winner.  Though this unstable arrangement didn’t last long, it managed at least to  reinforce the powers of the anti-corruption commission.

Now, Borissov’s party is back in power, but without a majority, so depends on the MP from one faction of the Turkish-minority Movement for Rights and Freedoms, led by, the man named at the start: Deylen Peevski.

Peevski is a Bulgarian oligarch so corrupt that he was sanctioned by British foreign Secretary James Cleverly as part of the UK’s anti-corruption regime and also by the United States under the Magnitsky Act. Peevski, the FCDO stated, “has been involved in attempts to exert control over key institutions and sectors in Bulgarian society through bribery and use of his media empire.”

It is odd, to say the least, that the (strengthened) anti corruption commission has not bestirred himself to investigate the interests of someone so condemned internationally. Odder still that just as this goes to press one of the key witnesses in the case against Varna Mayor Kotsev has withdrawn his accusation, saying his testimony was coreced, by agents of the anti-corruption commission.

Things may not have descended to the level of neighbouring Turkey, where Istanbul mayor Imamoglu was just handed a 20 month prison sentence, but this is looking more like an attempt to harass the opposition with selective prosecution than an attempt to root out genuine corruption.

Borissov, who is not Prime Minister, but whose GERB party dominates the government, has so far managed to maintain enough external credibility to earn the respect of NATO and get Buglaria ready to join the Euro. But he is also the product of a corrupt system that any politician in 2000s and 2010s Bulgaria could not avoid.  In such systems elected officials are never fully independent but, as in 1970s Italy, are beholden to what might be, to use the financial transparency term, their “beneficial owners.”  Borissov’s list beneficial owners may now include Peevski.

This leaves Borissov in a bind. What one GERB insider described as an attempt to paint the opposition We Continue the Change as just as corrupt as the others appears to have got out of hand.

Borissov has so far managed to stay committed to NATO and convince the EU Bulgaria is in good enough shape to join the Euro. But with this respectability come certain obligations not entirely consistent with those he has acquired during his political life, and many in his party want him to leave behind.

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