Power Struggle Over Bulgaria’s Gambling Industry Sees Tycoon Detained

Amid major changes to gambling laws in Bulgaria, the most influential figure in the sector, Vasil Bojkov, a billionaire businessman, football boss and former owner of the recently-nationalised National Lottery is facing deportation from the United Arab Emirates after his recent arrest.

Bojkov, who was detained on Friday, is charged with several crimes, including leading an organised criminal group, coercion, attempted bribery of an official and tax evasion. An international warrant was issued for his arrest on January 29 after he fled Bulgaria.

His arrest can be seen as another scalp for the ambitious new Chief Public Prosecutor, Ivan Geshev, who only started in the post at the beginning of 2020.

Geshev earlier this month also ordered the arrest of the Minister of Ecology, Neno Dimov, following a water crisis in the town of Pernik.

Bojkov's problems started in mid-January, when the leader of the right-wing United Patriots alliance in parliament, Valeri Simeonov, proposed changing gambling laws to nationalise the National Lottery, which, despite its name, was a private business.

The lottery is a highly profitable enterprise, with the head of parliament's budget committee, Menda Stoyanova, recently saying that Bulgarians spent a billion levs (half a billion euros) on it in 2018.

On January 23, parliament adopted the amendments - and a searching look into the lottery's affairs has ensued. The prosecution is now investigating whether the lottery prizes were actually ever paid out to people, amid suspicions that this did not happen.

On top of that, taxes that have been avoided in recent years amount to "more than half a billion lev [some 250 million euros]", according to Georgi Nachev, director of the State Financial...