ACF’s 2025 Annual Monitoring Report: Anti-Corruption Institutions are Increasingly Used as Tools for Political Repression

The Anti-Corruption Fund Foundation (ACF) has published its annual monitoring report Anti-Corruption Institutions 2025: Democracy in the Crosshairs. The report reviews the work of the key public institutions responsible for countering high-level corruption: the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Bulgaria, the Commission for the Counteracting of Corruption (CCC), and the Commission for the Forfeiture of Illegally Acquired Property (CFIAP). Authors of the report are Daniela Peneva, a legal expert with the ACF, and Zlatka Stefanova, a criminal attorney.

This is the eighth time in a row that the ACF monitors the effort to fight corruption in Bulgaria through criminal prosecution.

The report outlines the most concerning trends for 2025, namely the low effectiveness of anti-corruption institutions, lack of political will for reforms, and the use of anti-corruption institutions as tools for repression against political opponents and business competitors.

“The systemic crisis of the rule of law has transformed the work of anti-corruption bodies from a means of combating corruption into a tool for applying repression against opponents and covering up unlawful actions,” said Andrey Yankulov, interim Minister of Justice (February – May 2026) and author of the introduction to the report.

1. Politically Motivated Criminal Proceedings

In 2025, the Prosecutor’s Office initiated several criminal proceedings targeting mayors and municipal councillors representing the opposition We Continue the Change party. Among those investigated were Blagomir Kotsev, Yordan Kateliev, Nikola Stefanov, and Nikola Barbutov. According to the authors of the report, these investigations display elements of politically motivated proceedings which aim to change the political landscape through the criminal justice system.

The report highlights that this trend was evident as early as 2024, culminating in 2025 with the filing of charges for acts whose criminal nature is disputed, as well as significant repression against the individuals charged. Meanwhile, no proceedings on charges of suspected high-level corruption have been initiated against any representative of the governing political majority at that time.

2. Low effectiveness of the proceedings against high-level officials on charges of suspected corruption crimes

The analysis of all 71 high-level corruption proceedings and 39 proceedings against local authority officials shows that an increasing share of proceedings are closed by the public prosecution itself.  Another issue is the prolonged duration of the criminal proceedings. Of all proceedings under review, only one has been concluded at the court stage – a final acquittal for the former chairperson of the Management Board of the Road Infrastructure Agency, Lazar Lazarov.

Altogether, the number of final acquittals (17) is significantly higher than the number of final convictions (four). The inclusion of the newly identified proceedings initiated before 2025 increases the number of convictions to seven; however, some are not final.

3. Institutional lethargy and lack of reforms

“In 2025, too, the lethargy within criminal justice institutions continued – there were no changes, be it in terms of legislative amendments affecting their work, or personnel replacements,” said Zlatka Stefanova, who analysed the work of the Prosecutor’s Office for the report.

Borislav Sarafov stayed in the post of acting Prosecutor General, while members of the Supreme Judicial Council with long-expired mandates continued setting the course of the justice system. The report also addresses the crisis following 21 July 2025, when, according to its authors, the powers of the acting Prosecutor General were terminated by law. Despite the abundance of reports of magistrates linked to the criminal organisations around Petyo Petrov “The Euro” and Martin Bojanov “The Notary”, neither the individuals leading justice institutions nor political leaders took any meaningful steps to clear the ranks of the judiciary.

4. The CCC, conflicts of interest, and the CFIAP

According to the authors of the report, the closure of the Commission for the Counteracting of Corruption (CCC) in January 2026 represents yet another technical change of the institutional anti-corruption framework, which is unlikely to bring about any meaningful change. Furthermore, public authorities did not carry out any analysis of the CCC’s work and achievements, while its closure jeopardised the disbursement of funds under Bulgaria’s Recovery and Resilience Plan.

At the same time, an analysis of the decisions issued by the CCC in 2025 again shows its limited effectiveness in identifying conflicts of interest. Of the 148 cases reviewed, the commission found conflicts of interest in only 22. In addition, the total number of incompatibility cases reviewed was 45, and not a single instance of incompatibility was found.

“The commission has continued to conduct conflict of interest proceedings in a formalistic manner,” said Daniela Peneva, author of the second part of the report which analyses the work of the CCC and the CFIAP. “The inquiries failed to investigate if public interest had been compromised, whether there were any suspicions that officials had carried out their duties impartially and objectively, or what the possible underlying relationships and dependencies are that place certain individuals in privileged positions.”

These results lead to the conclusion that there is a clear lack of will to investigate corruption and sanction those who engage in it,” she said.

Limited effectiveness is also evident in the work of the CFIAP. An analysis of the court decisions concerning forfeiture proceedings shows that the value of claims rejected by the court or withdrawn by the commission is very substantial – BGN 248 million, which equals 95 per cent of the total value of all claims in court proceedings concluded in 2025.

The value of successful claims totalled BGN 14 million, while only a fraction of those (BGN 6.5 million have come into effect. Meanwhile, the CFIAP was ordered to pay over BGN 12 million in court expenses.

“The overall conclusion of the report is that democracy is, indeed, in the crosshairs. While public institutions are not working effectively against high-level corruption, there is a palpable risk that they be used selectively, as tools for applying political pressure instead of guardians of the rule of law,” said Boyko Stankushev, director of the ACF. “The most effective way to counter these negative trends is civic action — through public pressure, demands for accountability, and zero tolerance for abuses of institutional power.”

The full text of the report is available here.

The report Anti-Corruption Institutions 2025: Democracy in the Crosshairs was prepared with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung under its Rule of Law Programme for Southeast Europe.

The content of the annual monitoring report reflects the views of its authors solely and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, its Rule of Law – South East Europe programme, or the America for Bulgaria Foundation.