‘Disneyland of corruption’: How a luxury villa sparked fury and threatens to collapse Bulgaria’s government

When Bulgarian politician Hristo Ivanov pulled up in a motor boat at a Black Sea villa three months ago, he sparked a firestorm of protests about rampant corruption that threaten to bring down the country’s leader.

The villa belongs to Ahmed Dogan, the 66-year-old founder of an opposition party representing the country’s ethnic and religious minorities. He’s one of Bulgaria’s leading political and economic oligarchs, and numerous boat operators refused to ferry Ivanov – the US-educated leader of a small political party – and his team, out of fear of Dogan and his ties to those in power, including Kremlin-backed oligarchs and the centre-right government of Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boyko Borissov.

The gigantic villa on the Black Sea, outside the resort city of Burgas, had never been photographed before. And as Ivanov live-streamed his adventure, the splendour of Dogan’s estate came into view for all Bulgarians to see. The sprawling and elegant estate rises three stories. It includes a lookout tower that stretches even higher. Along the water, the property boasts its own yacht harbour and what appears to be a separate guest house.

But the magnificent estate is also totally illegal, says Ivanov, a lawyer and former justice minister. The building rests atop public land, and is registered as a municipal building. It was designated as an “agricultural” property built in the 1980s so that it could swallow the beach and seaside and thus circumvent laws making Bulgarian waterfronts public property, even though satellite photos show that it was built between 2016 and 2018.

The road leading to the estate was “donated” to Dogan on the grounds that it led nowhere. What's more, official Bulgarian national security service enforcers are used to guard the site. They bullied Ivanov when he arrived on the beach in a scene captured on video.

“It’s a Disneyland of corruption,” Ivanov tells The Independent in an interview. “There's not a single feature of that estate that is legal.”

The video pushed a Bulgarian public already simmering over continuous reports of alleged corruption into a full-blown rage. Nightly protests in the capital, Sofia, and other cities continue to endure. The target of the public’s anger is not just Borissov, but also the general prosecutor, Ivan Stoimenov Geshev, who is seen as an enabler of a network of corrupt elites and their system of graft.

“There is a caste of people who don’t obey the laws and make the law work for them,” says Ivanov, leader of the Yes Bulgaria party. “That’s what drives people mad.”

On 22 September, the day marking Bulgarian independence, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in one of the largest anti-government protests yet. Bulgarian general elections are scheduled for 28 March, but many want the government to resign now, fearing that Borissov will cheat in the upcoming vote. More fundamentally, they view the entire political class as a clique of elites who need to be run out of office.

“We’ve been here almost every day for 77 days,” says Victor Stanchev, 35, an administrator at a pharmaceutical company, who came to the protest in Sofia’s central Largo Square with his wife Gergana, 31, and their nine-month-old infant Hristo, tucked into a baby carrier on his chest. “We come here to demonstrate against the corrupt government and the main prosecutor who works for the mafia. They’re working like one team.”

The coronavirus pandemic has worsened the economic outlook for already fragile countries like Bulgaria. There are major perceptions of misallocation of public funds, and awarding of government contracts to favoured cronies, allegations that have been reinforced by a series of sensational leaks prompted by infighting among oligarchs.

Meanwhile, Bulgarians pay taxes of up to 40 per cent of their salaries and see few service improvements. “I’m here because of my mum,” says Lyubomira Velcheva, a 34-year-old executive who was out among the protesters this week in Sofia. “She’s retired and her pension is like 160 euros per month and the poverty line is 190 euros. She’s quite sick and an invalid. It’s good that my father is caring for her, and my sister and I are helping her, because our social policies are terrible.”

Though the protests are focused on corruption in Bulgaria they touch upon much broader themes relevant to the Balkans and Europe.  

Those include the rise of right-wing populism and the manipulation of the democratic process through chicanery evident across eastern and central Europe as well as in the United States under Donald Trump.

Borissov, a brash populist with a reputation for wanton womanising, is a former bodyguard and firefighter who relishes his tough-guy image. His supporters include football hooligans who confront protesters in the streets, and his deputies have smeared the protesters as “losers,” “monkeys” and “degenerates”.

In photos leaked over the summer, Borissov was seen lying asleep next to a gun, cash and gold bars in a picture many assume was taken by one of the high-end escorts who entered the prime ministerial suite. He never explained the photos, further exacerbating public outrage.

Bulgaria has been rocked by a series of scandals involving alleged embezzlement of European Union development funds by well-connected insiders. In just one example, a report by the investigative website Bivol found that well-connected insiders had used millions of dollars in EU funds – which were meant for sprucing up family-owned hotels in rural areas – to renovate their own private homes. Instead of investigating the allegations, Bulgarian authorities have urged France to investigate the Paris-based journalist who wrote the report and runs Bivol.

There is also growing frustration over the unwillingness of both Brussels and leaders of pan-European centre-right political leaders to call out the abuses of Bulgaria as well as ideological fellow travellers in Poland, Hungary and Romania. Borissov’s ruling party is a member of the pan-European centre-right coalition of parties headed by Angela Merkel, who serves as his patron.

In a televised address last month, Borissov said he would resign pending a vote by parliament. But many dismissed the offer as a mere attempt to cool public tempers and buy time. Polls show that more than 60 percent of the public support the protests.

Among protesters, there is little faith that elections next year would dislodge the ruling elite. In the past, there have been allegations of Borissov’s party engaging in vote-buying, especially targeting the country’s Roma minority, and stuffing ballot boxes.

Protesters are demanding changes to election rules to make it easier for Bulgarians living abroad to vote and to make the process more transparent.

“One of the reasons Borissov won’t resign is because other people will then organise the elections,” says Georgi Elenkov, a 25-year-old Sofia law-school graduate. “He has changed the election process into a complete farce. Everything is dominated by the party of Borissov.”

Despite sporadic outbreaks of violence and chaos between protesters and Bulgarian police, the demonstrations have been largely peaceful. The protesters say they have no doubt that Bulgaria’s membership in the EU prompts restraint by the authorities, unlike in Belarus, where Alexander Lukashenko has unleashed brutal violence against anti-government demonstrators after an election he allegedly rigged.  

“We’re protected by the EU,” says protester Lilia Elenkova, a project manager at an international organisation with offices in the Bulgarian capital. “If we were not part of the EU, we would be in the same position as in Belarus.”