Bulgarian Prosecutor-General Ivan Geshev captured national headlines on March 16 when he announced tantalizing details worthy of a crime thriller about an alleged mafia plot to oust several police chiefs and one very powerful official.
At a grand press conference in the capital, Sofia, with the head of national investigations at his side, Geshev said his team had found letters and records detailing the conspiracy while investigating a separate money-laundering case.
According to the prosecutor-general, the conspirators -- who go by names such as "Ceco from Belgrade," "Kokorcho," and "Boboka" -- were willing to pay $220,000 in bribes to achieve their goals, which also included removing him from power.
The plot, Geshev said, was a quintessential example of how the mafia, corrupt officials, and criminals "together fight against the institutions and against the [Bulgarian] state, contrary to the interest of people."
The 52-year-old prosecutor's presentation lacked hard evidence, and he did not announce any charges related to the alleged plot. With some critics calling it a show, Geshev's portrayal of himself as a target of the mafia and corrupt officials comes as he is facing increasing heat from the United States and Europe for allegedly dragging his feet on prosecuting and convicting such lawbreakers.
Bulgaria continues to rank as one of the most corrupt countries in the European Union and NATO, and there has been little to no improvement on that front over the past decade, despite constant urging by Brussels and Washington to tackle the problem.
Some experts say it has even gotten worse under Boyko Borisov -- who served as Bulgarian prime minister for most of the period between 2009 and 2021 -- and his powerful center-right GERB party. Borisov remains one of the most influential people in the country and is vying to regain the top position with his party in snap parliamentary elections on April 2, the fifth such vote in two years.
The head of the GERB party and Bulgaria's former prime minister, Boyko Borisov (file photo)
Bulgaria's endemic corruption is becoming a greater concern in Washington and Brussels because Southeastern Europe is seen as a vulnerable spot with intensifying great-power competition between NATO and Russia amid the war in Ukraine. U.S. officials say unchecked graft makes Bulgaria susceptible to malign Russian actions and is thus a threat to NATO members in the region.
Recent RFE/RL reporting into ammunition depot blasts in Bulgaria over the last decade has pointed to evidence of Russian involvement, including allegations that the Prosecutor-General's Office has procrastinated with the investigations into the explosions, a charge Geshev denies.
WATCH: Over the past decade, Bulgaria's arms industry has been shaken by a string of unexplained explosions at munitions depots. A special RFE/RL investigation looks into allegations of Russian sabotage, cover-ups by Bulgarian authorities, and whether Bulgarian arms depots are still at risk as Russia's war in Ukraine enters a second year.
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Special Report: Bulgarian Blasts And Russia's War In Ukraine
Firm Grip On Power
Geshev, who became prosecutor-general in 2019 in a controversial election in which he was the only candidate, formally holds the most power to crack down on corruption and break its stranglehold over the country of 7 million people, which is located on the strategically important Black Sea.
Yet, he has made little progress in holding influential people to account in his more than three years in office, critics say. While Geshev's office occasionally announces investigations into members of the elite suspected of wrongdoing, they rarely lead to charges, much less convictions, critics say. The prosecutor-general has also been accused of abusing his power to launch political investigations and expropriate assets from businessmen, something he also denies.
Political opponents and analysts claim Geshev is beholden to Borisov and tycoon Delyan Peevski, a powerful businessman and former lawmaker who has also been embroiled in graft allegations.
Delyan Peevski officially sold his media businesses following the announcement of U.S. sanctions, but critics believe he still has significant influence over them. (file photo)
Seven months after stepping into the nation's top legal job, Geshev sent investigators into the presidential palace to search the office of an adviser to President Rumen Radev. An opponent of Borisov and Peevski, Radev had initially rejected Geshev's candidacy for the post of prosecutor-general.
A career prosecutor, Geshev already had a questionable reputation when he was nominated by a council largely comprised of Borisov and Peevski loyalists. From 2014 to 2018, he headed the Specialized Criminal Prosecution, an office set up ostensibly to fight corruption.
In material distributed on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2020, Marshall Harris, a former U.S. State Department official who has lobbied on behalf of Bulgarian businessmen facing criminal charges at home that they call trumped up, described a specialized court where Geshev prosecuted cases as a tool "to stifle political opposition, capture businesses, and torment their owners into submission by all means necessary." It was shut down in 2022 by parliament, reportedly against Geshev's will.
Geshev's decision to raid the office of the presidential adviser in the summer of 2020 came amid public anger over corruption in Borisov's government, giving more fuel to a growing protest movement. Demonstrators soon demanded the dismissal of Geshev along with several ministers, but the prosecutor-general weathered the monthslong storm.
Unlike ministers, Bulgaria's prosecutor-general cannot be fired by the prime minister. That power lies with the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), a 25-member body composed of legal experts chosen by prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers. The members, who serve five-year terms, include subordinates of the prosecutor-general.
That structure makes it hard to fire the prosecutor-general once he is elected and is one of the main problems of the judicial system, Harris said. The SJC last year voted 16-2 against a request by Justice Minister Nadezhda Yordanova to dismiss Geshev for both his "actions and inactions." Geshev said Yordanova's request was politically motivated.
The Bulgarian prosecutor-general has more power than counterparts in the European Union. The nation's top law enforcer oversees the work of all other prosecutors and holds the final say on whether to initiate, prolong, or end an investigation. It is almost impossible to prosecute the prosecutor-general for crimes.
Critics say Ivan Geshev, Bulgaria's prosecutor-general, has made little progress in holding influential people to account in his more than three years in office.
"The prosecutor-general is the only unaccountable high-ranking [Bulgarian] public official who enjoys such immunity and privileges," Ekaterina Baksanova, a Bulgarian legal expert, wrote in a 2020 report.
Washington and Brussels have been pushing Bulgaria for years to reform its legal system to make the Prosecutor-General's Office less centralized and more accountable, in line with EU standards. However, proposed legal reform bills have been shot down by Borisov's GERB party.
Western Sanctions
In what some experts say is a sign of the West's frustration with the Bulgarian Prosecutor-General's Office's lack of will to fight graft, the United States and the United Kingdom last month slapped sanctions on several Bulgarian politicians and tycoons for alleged corruption.
In its February 10 statement announcing five designations, the United States said the fact that the men in question had long been prominent in Bulgarian politics highlighted the "critical need for the political will to implement rule of law reform and to fight corruption."
It was the second time in less than two years that the United States imposed economic and visa penalties on the Bulgarian elite. The individuals sanctioned by the United Statess and Britain include Peevski, who also controlled large swaths of the nation's media industry. Peevski officially sold his media businesses following the announcement of U.S. sanctions, but critics believe he still has significant influence over them.
The United States has now sanctioned eight Bulgarian individuals and dozens of Bulgarian entities, more than any other EU country.
"I think in Washington there's a great deal of frustration that no matter what happens, the Bulgarians are unwilling to root out the endemic corruption that has been around for so long," Jim Warlick, the former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria from 2009-11, told RFE/RL, adding that graft appears to have gotten worse in Bulgaria in recent years.
Geshev, however, seemingly interpreted the Western sanctions as an endorsement of his office's hard work. In a statement to RFE/RL, Geshev's spokesman, Veselin Ivanov, noted that the Prosecutor-General's Office had already charged several of the eight designated individuals with crimes prior to the imposition of sanctions.
"It may be considered that the imposed sanctions confirm the work of the Bulgarian prosecutor's office," Ivanov said.
Ilko Zhelyazkov
However, Geshev has not charged the individuals with the crimes alleged in the U.S. sanctions report. Nor has he charged Peevski or Ilko Zhelyazkov, a former national security official who, according to a 2021 statement from the U.S. Treasury Department announcing sanctions on the two men, was Peevski's "front man." None of the eight men has been convicted to date, though some trials are continuing.
In the Treasury Department's 2021 statement announcing sanctions on Peevski, the United States implied he had sway over the Prosecutor-General's Office. According to the statement, Zhelyazkov once threatened to have criminal charges filed against a potential Bulgarian government minister if the minister did not provide "further assistance upon appointment."
RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service attempted to contact Zhelyazkov in 2021 when the sanctions were first announced but received no reply. His whereabouts are unknown.
Warlick said taking legal action against people like Peevski is difficult.
"They're very influential and well connected and very hard to get at," he said. Prosecutors are indeed sometimes "real targets" of organized crime, Warlick said.
But that is no excuse for some U.S. officials.
In December 2022, prior to the most recent designations, U.S. Representative Warren Davidson (Republican-Ohio), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, complained about Geshev in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, claiming that the prosecutor-general failed to combat corruption, stop sanctions evasion by Russia, or bring charges against Peevski and Zhelyazkov.
Tsvetan Vassilev
In the written reply to RFE/RL, Geshev's spokesman Ivanov said Davidson had been "misled" by the lobbying efforts of Bulgarian businessman Tsvetan Vassilev, describing the former bank owner as part of a "malicious Russian influence" campaign. Vassilev, who lives in exile in Serbia, has been employing the services of Washington-based lobbyists for years to convince the United States to impose sanctions on Bulgarian officials, including prosecutors.
Vassilev had been the majority shareholder of Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB), the nation's fourth-largest bank. In 2014, Bulgarian prosecutors raided CCB on allegations of embezzlement, triggering a run on deposits that caused the bank to fail. Vassilev claims his innocence and has accused prosecutors of fabricating the embezzlement case to expropriate the bank.
Ivanov also dismissed Davidson's complaint regarding combating Russian influence, noting the prosecutor-general had convicted and deported 11 Russian diplomats charged with spying. He has also charged six Bulgarians with spying for Russia, Ivanov said, although none of the Bulgarians accused of spying has been convicted.
Davidson's office declined further comment when contacted by RFE/RL. J.C. Boggs, a lobbyist who most recently presented Vassilev's case on Capitol Hill, also did not respond to requests for comment.
Lobbying Washington
During his press conference on March 16, Geshev speculated that Vassilev may have been part of the alleged conspiracy to drive him from office. He said the name VTB was mentioned in one of the documents found by investigators, alongside a figure representing millions of dollars. He questioned whether VTB was a reference to the Russian state-owned bank that was a partner of Vassilev and, if so, what connection it had to payments made by "Ceco from Belgrade" to an unknown lobbyist.
Harris, the former U.S. State Department official and Bulgaria expert, said Geshev's presentation was "nothing more than theater." Harris, who served at the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria in the late 1980s and early '90s, now lobbies for the Bobokov brothers, Bulgarian businessmen who claim Geshev's office falsely brought criminal charges against them in order to seize their businesses. Harris also recently represented Minyu Stakov, another businessman who made similar claims against Geshev.
Marshall Harris, the former U.S. State Department official and Bulgaria expert, describes Ivan Geshev as "the biggest threat" to Bulgarian democracy and justice.
The former State Department official said the alleged plot allows Geshev to garner the spotlight in Bulgaria and "adopt his favorite posture: not only as the sole protector and provider of justice in an otherwise corrupt society, but also as the victim of multiple criminal conspiracies involving myriad enemies of good arrayed against him."
Five weeks after Davidson sent his critical letter to the U.S. Treasury secretary, Geshev traveled to Washington at the invitation of two congressmen to attend a House of Representatives forum on counterbalancing Russian and Chinese influence in Europe.
The forum, organized by Representative Pete Sessions (Republican-Texas) and Representative Robert Aderholt (Republican-Alabama), coincided with the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual, exclusive event attended by the sitting U.S. president, members of Congress, and other prominent figures.
In a press release prior to his trip, Geshev said he would be attending the breakfast, although he was not invited to the actual event. Like other foreign officials, he watched it from a screen in a Washington hotel conference room.
Geshev separately met with Sessions and Aderholt during his trip to Washington but, contrary to experts' expectations, he did not have any official meetings with the State Department or Justice Department, a possible sign he is not seen as a reliable interlocutor by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.
The United States has now sanctioned eight Bulgarian individuals and dozens of Bulgarian entities, more than any other EU country.
The offices of Sessions and Aderholt did not respond to RFE/RL requests for comment on why Geshev was invited to the forum and what message they delivered to him. In a statement to RFE/RL, the State Department said it was "not aware of any official meetings between Mr. Geshev and [State] Department representatives." It also said it generally does "not comment on relationships with specific government interlocutors."
If Geshev saw the Washington invite as a way to counter the negative media headlines triggered by Davidson's letter, it probably had little impact on his image at home, said Robert Phillips, a political science professor at the Sofia-based American University in Bulgaria.
"Those who support him would see it as a positive, and an indication that he can move in Washington circles. Those who do not support him are not going to be persuaded by these meetings," Phillips told RFE/RL.
WATCH: Bulgarians go to the polls on April 2 to vote in the country's fifth parliamentary elections in two years amid ongoing political instability. There are concerns over possible political fraud after it was decided voters would be able to use paper ballots as well as electronic voting machines that are considered less susceptible to manipulation.
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While the Bobokov brothers have been able to successfully defend their assets, they would like to see Geshev legally removed from power because of what they claim is his abuse of power, Harris said.
He described Geshev as "the biggest threat" to Bulgarian democracy and justice.
"Until Geshev is removed from office, Bulgaria cannot recover from the dismantling of its democracy by Borisov and his GERB party," he said.
That is unlikely in the near term. Bulgaria is currently so politically divided it has been unable to form a stable government over the past two years. Harris, like others, doesn't expect the April 2 parliamentary elections to generate a workable coalition.
As a result, he doesn't see Geshev leaving power before his term ends in 2026.
"Bulgaria is on a bad path, and I don't think it's going to get off for the foreseeable future because there's not going to be a clear leader," he said.