Todor Angelov, the opposition candidate, was elected the new president of the Bulgarian Wrestling Federation (BWF). This happened during the extraordinary General Assembly of the headquarters, scheduled by the Sofia City Court and held at the National Sports Academy “Vasil Levski“. By decision of the delegates, the previous chairwoman Stanka Zlateva was officially dismissed from her post.
The meeting was marked by serious tension and scandals. Before the voting on the items on the agenda, some of the clubs supporting Zlateva left the hall in protest and insisted on scheduling a new meeting. However, due to the presence of the necessary quorum, the meeting continued as planned.
The meeting began with a nearly 45-minute delay, and the first to take the podium was Zlateva herself, who addressed sharp words to those present:
„I have fulfilled all the commitments I have made. I gave myself a little more to the whole boycotts that are everywhere. I think we did it. We tried to ensure that the clubs had more funding. I think you are satisfied or not? You are not? Who is not?
Here the choice will be do we want Bulgarian wrestling or another wrestling. Do we want our wrestling, our clubs? I ate a lot of fighting, but I did not betray anyone for what I set out for. I hope you will be men, because in this men's sport I have seen hypocrisy and betrayals! And tomorrow you all look me in the eye“, said the five-time world champion.
Zlateva proposed Kiril Vatev for chairman of the meeting, and Grisha Ganchev nominated Belcho Goranov. Ultimately, the delegates elected Goranov with 88 votes.
After the nearly 90-minute break that followed, Goranov announced obvious inaccuracies in the registration of club representatives, but was categorical that with the presence of 112 clubs there was the necessary quorum and all decisions taken were completely legitimate.
The first item on the agenda was the dismissal of the current members of the Board of Directors, which was voted on with 93 votes “for” and 0 “against“.
The election of the new Board of Directors of the Bulgarian Football Union followed, which includes a number of emblematic figures for Bulgarian sports:
Todor Angelov (president)
Grisha Ganchev
Armen Nazaryan
Ivo Angelov
Belcho Goranov
Rahma Sofiadi
Valentin Getsov
Evgeni Stanchev
Miroslav Gochev
Nikolay Dachev
Zolo Bozilski
Stanislav Trendafilov