The shortest path to wealth in Bulgaria is through politics. The personal wealth of many politicians, magistrates and senior officials, declared in their property declarations, is comparable to that of successful entrepreneurs.
The shortest path to wealth in Bulgaria is through politics. Formally, civil service is a service to society, but in practice it has become a mechanism for class advancement.
It is enough to look at the declarations of property and interests of public figures. In the quarter century since 2000, when Bulgaria first introduced mandatory asset declaration for people at the top of power, a wealthy caste of those entering through the official entrance has formed. "State bourgeoisie" - that's what writer Radoslav Bimbalov called it in a Facebook post.
The government increases the market price of a person, his contacts and the services he could offer. For example, a high-ranking official transferred from the State Gambling Commission to the Financial Supervision Commission, and then to a third regulator, can be especially valuable to businesses that the state should be controlling. It can also be valuable for party circles that transfer it from one position to another, since it is likely that business will thank them as well.
And here politics no longer only represents capital, but it itself produces capitalists.
Political economy
The personal wealth of many politicians, magistrates and senior officials, declared in property declarations, is comparable to that of successful entrepreneurs.
Their assets often take convenient forms for concealment - cash on hand, bank deposits and private receivables. Deposits are verifiable as to their availability, but not necessarily as to their origin, while cash and private receivables often remain only allegations. Some of them are undoubtedly real, but the truth of others cannot be established.
Why is this so? Because the legislators, who are also some of the persons obliged to declare their assets, have "failed" to specify the norms. The law requires a declaration, but not evidence when declaring available money and receivables - bank statements for the withdrawn amount, a loan agreement or confirmation from the debtor.
One MP entered receivables for over 1 million euros, another - a solid sum in cash. The origin remains unclear, but the money already has a documentary biography. If a part of it hides a future corruption rent, the explanation for its appearance has been prepared in advance: it is not a bribe, but old cash or a returned loan. Once passed through the declaration, the funds can now finance the purchase of a new property or investment. Thus, an unverified statement becomes an alibi for future enrichment.
Of course, the increase in income itself does not prove corruption. But the lack of reliable checks reinforces doubts.
The Court of Auditors, where asset declarations are once again submitted, and the Anti-Corruption Commission have conducted compliance checks. The Court of Auditors had announced that from 2007 until the transfer of the register in 2018, it had issued over 2,500 conclusions of non-compliance - and as a result of the reports submitted to the National Revenue Agency and the State Agency for National Security and Defense, around 1 million leva in tax liabilities were established. But no fines or criminal proceedings have been reported.
This is a parody of control, convenient for all politicians. These checks basically compare the declaration with the available registers. This is how, for example, an undeclared apartment, purchase of shares or a bank account are discovered. However, there is no way to verify whether the declared cash is actually available and whether the private claim is real.
And in the event of a discovered non-compliance, the scheme that it is "incompleteness" is most often applied or "mistake" and that it can be fixed. In addition, fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law, thrifty parents who donated property and money, always come to the rescue.
If a scandal breaks out, the prosecutor's office and tax authorities are on hand.
There was one in 2019, not with anyone, but with the chairman of the anti-corruption commission and former prosecutor Plamen Georgiev himself, who had not declared a roof terrace with an area of 186 sq. m. According to his interpretation, it was a common part of the building and was not subject to declaration. However, it was described in the notarial deed, was used only through his apartment and was included in the tax assessment, bTV revealed.
The inspection assigned to the National Revenue Agency ended without any violations being found, and the prosecutor's office did not open an investigation. The only result was that the sheds and barbecue on the terrace were destroyed, and Georgiev was even sent as a consul to Valencia.
A year before the scandal, Plamen Georgiev announced that the National Revenue Agency had provided the results of three inspections and three audits of the oligarch and politician Delyan Peevski for the period January 1, 2003 - December 31, 2017, and no discrepancy was found between the income, acquired property and the declared. The KPKONPI additionally requested documents from Peevski about his income for the last five years - and also found that there was no discrepancy.
May the lineage be alive and well - and the godparents
The case of the former police chief in the Romanian Cluj County, Ioan Păcurar, shows how inventive explanations can be.
The inspection by the Romanian National Integrity Agency found a nearly 189,000 euro difference between Păcurar's income and expenses for six years. His explanations are like something out of a Balkan movie. The police officer explained the discrepancy by 93,000 euros in gifts from his wedding in 2005, about 90,000 euros from his son's baptism in 2011, as well as money from his wife and his father, who raised animals.
The wife added 8,600 euros from the sale of a car, but did not remember the name of the buyer. The father and brother said that the family farm provided him with 78,000 euros in 2004 alone, although the tax authorities did not find any declared income for the father for the period 2004-2006.
A witness assured the court that he was present when about 90,000 euros were counted after the wedding and 96,000 euros after the baptism. The prosecutor in the case considered it suspicious that he accurately remembered amounts and events from so many years ago. Finally, after all the explanations, about 57,000 euros remained of unproven origin and were confiscated. In 2025, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the seizure of the funds did not violate the right to a fair trial and the right to property.
In Romania, weddings and baptisms, it turns out, bring in good income. In Bulgaria, a godfather provided a finance minister with a 180 square meter apartment - free of charge. In the Balkans, kinship is a source of wealth.
In 2018, the then Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov declared that since 2012 he had been using an apartment of about 180 square meters free of charge in a luxury capital complex. After the public scandal, Goranov explained that the apartment was provided to him by his godfather and that he did not see a conflict of interest. The institutions didn't see it either.
This is how the rich are created from the official entrance - through the silent collusion of lawmakers, services, the prosecutor's office and tax authorities. The question remains whether the new anti-corruption commission will encroach on the mechanism that the political class has built for its own protection.
This text expresses the opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the State Gazette as a whole.