Bulgaria's caretaker agriculture minister has filed corruption referrals involving schemes worth hundreds of millions of euros and handed them to the incoming government led by Rumen Radev. Whether those cases reach court will be the first real test of the new administration's anti-corruption promises.

Ivan Hristanov, appointed in February to a caretaker cabinet following the collapse of the previous government, spent his short tenure livestreaming police raids, reopening dormant fraud investigations, and surfacing contracts he said were inflated by over 20 times their actual cost. His files are now with prosecutors. Bulgaria's prosecution service is where such cases have historically gone to die.

Inflated contracts and erased records

Hristanov flagged two state irrigation tenders funded by the EU and worth €169 million, where construction work that should have cost around €43,000 was being billed at €1 million. He also reopened an alleged livestock-incineration fraud he had first reported as deputy minister in 2022, only to find on his return that every trace of his original complaint, both electronic and paper, had been wiped from the records of four agriculture and food safety agencies.

A factory said to be producing contaminated meat supplied to schools was owned by the wife of a member of parliament from the party of Delyan Peevski. Peevski is a media oligarch sanctioned by the US for corruption under its Global Magnitsky Act. He has denied the charges and said the sanctions are unacceptable. He controls significant media assets in Bulgaria and has been a recurring figure in corruption allegations for over a decade.

The contaminated meat allegations, the inflated contracts, and the erased records have all been referred to prosecutors. But history suggests caution. Ruslan Stefanov, chief economist at the Center for the Study of Democracy in Sofia, said: "The lack of any follow-up from the Bulgarian prosecution continues to be the main bottleneck." EU institutions and civil society groups have long documented the same pattern. Investigations stall. Files get terminated. Few reach court.

The ski lodge

Hristanov also blocked the planned sale of a state-owned property on Vitosha Mountain, a ski lodge valued at €10 million with 20 rooms, panoramic views, and a ski lift 100 metres away. A previous administration had agreed to sell it to a company linked to businessman Rumen Gaitanski for €500,000.

Gaitanski, known in local media as "The Wolf", has been in pretrial detention since August 2024 on separate embezzlement charges related to a loan from a state-owned lender. He has denied wrongdoing in that case.

Hristanov visited the lodge, filmed it, and posted the footage to Facebook. His description was pointed. The video has drawn over 600,000 views. His ministry proposed transferring the property to the education ministry for use by schoolchildren. The buyer's side has demanded €1 million in compensation. Lawyers for Gaitanski did not respond to requests for comment.

Radev's test

Rumen Radev resigned the presidency in January to run in the parliamentary elections. His Progressive Bulgaria party won an outright majority on 19 April, taking nearly 45 percent of the vote after promising to dismantle what he called Bulgaria's "oligarchic governance model".

His win triggered the immediate resignation of acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov, who had been accused by reform advocates and opposition lawmakers of shielding figures including three-time Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Peevski. In his resignation statement, Sarafov said he had made the decision "some time ago" and delayed it to avoid destabilising the prosecution service. He did not address the accusations directly.

The new parliament now has the supermajority needed to overhaul the Supreme Judicial Council and appoint a new prosecutor general, a reform the EU has long pressed for. Brussels welcomed the result. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa rushed to congratulate Radev, despite Brussels' own concerns about Radev's record of softness on Russia.

What this means for British expats

Bulgaria rates worst in the EU, tied with Hungary, on Transparency International's most recent corruption index. EU funds, the country's largest source of public investment, have been the subject of hundreds of fraud investigations in recent years involving phantom farms, inflated contracts, and politically connected middlemen.

For British expats in Bulgaria, the quality of governance affects the rule of law, investor confidence, and the business environment. Corruption undermines judicial independence, which matters for contract enforcement, property rights, and business disputes. The UK's bilateral relations with Bulgaria, particularly on trade and security cooperation, are shaped by Bulgaria's ability to enforce anti-corruption reforms and strengthen its institutions.

Analysts in and outside Bulgaria have been cautious about Radev's prospects. Anti-corruption was central to his campaign and he told reporters on election day that Bulgaria had a "historic chance to break once and for all with the oligarchic Peevski-Borisov model." But the coalition he assembled from former cabinet ministers, members of his presidential administration, and politicians who had drifted from the now-defunct Bulgarian Socialist Party is ideologically incoherent. It needs an issue everyone can agree on.

"Anti-corruption is the logical unifier," said Maria Simeonova of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Sofia. But the same arithmetic that makes the unifier necessary makes deep enforcement risky. Governing means alliances and a parliamentary group full of new MPs who will expect to be rewarded with appointments, state contracts, and regional patronage.

Even Sarafov's resignation looks more like a showpiece than the start of a fundamental shift, some analysts say. Emilia Zankina of Temple University Rome, a specialist in Bulgarian politics, said Radev might take some headline actions but not much else. The coalition logic that demands the anti-corruption rhetoric to hold his base, in her view, also means Radev cannot afford the disruption of pursuing it too deeply.

"A few people may change here and there, but the model Peevski-Borisov will simply be replaced with the Radev model of one-person rule."

Radev's Progressive Bulgaria did not respond to requests for comment.

The whistleblower minister

Hristanov founded his anti-corruption movement, Edinenie (Unity), in 2023. In January, it joined three smaller parties to form an Anti-Corruption Bloc that contested the 19 April election. The bloc did not win the minimum 4 percent of the vote necessary to claim seats in parliament, and Hristanov was not on the ballot. That was a choice, he explained, to keep the caretaker government "equally distanced from all the political parties." Voters could not connect what they were watching on Facebook to a name on their ballot paper.

Asked whether he trusts Radev, Hristanov demurred. "Any new government should have their 100 days. Let's give them this credit of trust, and then we see."

And beyond the 100 days?

"If they are good, they are good. If they are bad, then we hit."