# Prosecutor’s Office Has Terminated the “Golden Puddle” Case at the Kapitan Andreevo Border Crossing, BIRD Reports
The Prosecutor’s Office has terminated the investigation into the “Golden Puddle” case at the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, BIRD.BG reports. According to BIRD.BG’s check of the prosecution service’s electronic case management system, the decision to terminate the proceedings is dated 12 February 2026.
The case was opened following the Anti-Corruption Fund and Genka Shikerova’s 2019 investigation “The Golden Puddle”. It showed how disinfection services and fee collection at the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing had been unlawfully outsourced by the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BFSA) to the private company P.F.C. Ltd. According to publicly available data from the Commercial Register, between 2013 and 2019 alone the company generated more than BGN 33 million in revenue from this activity.
The investigation also showed that P.F.C. Ltd. was established in February 2013 — just days before it won the tender to provide the service. An activity which, by law, could only be carried out by the state was thus transferred to a private company. The company had no capacity to perform the service, yet generated substantial revenues from it.
Over the years, the actions taken by the authorities in relation to P.F.C. Ltd. did not result in effective accountability.
As early as 2019, ACF submitted reports to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Financial Inspection Agency (PFIA) concerning the unlawful outsourcing of the service and the collection of fees by a private company. In 2020, the Prosecutor’s Office initially refused to open pre-trial proceedings, but following an appeal by ACF, the Sofia Appellate Prosecutor’s Office overturned that decision and returned the case for further investigation.
In 2021, the National Revenue Agency (NRA) announced that P.F.C. had more than BGN 32 million in cash on hand, while its cash registers were not connected to the revenue agency’s system. In light of this information suggesting undeclared income, the NRA launched a tax audit of P.F.C. According to BIRD.BG, the company was issued a tax assessment exceeding BGN 7 million, but this was subsequently overturned by the court, and the NRA did not appeal the ruling before the Supreme Administrative Court.
In mid-January 2023, the Ministry of Interior launched an investigation into how the so-called “Golden Puddle” at the border had been managed. At the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, then caretaker Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev stated that the authorities were also examining information uncovered by the tax authorities, according to which some of the cash registers at the site had not been fiscally connected to the NRA system.
By March 2023, the disinfection of vehicles entering Bulgaria from Turkey had been discontinued by order of the Minister of Agriculture after the contract with P.F.C. expired. For reasons that remain unclear, however, Dimitar Glavchev’s caretaker government subsequently decided to pay the company BGN 12 million in compensation — even though the contract had already expired.
In May 2023, the PFIA confirmed that serious violations had been identified in the “Golden Puddle” case: the outsourcing of disinfection services and fee collection was unlawful; fees collected from more than 130,000 trucks were missing from the records of the private collector of the “disinfection fee”; and the state had covered the electricity and water costs of the disinfection facilities at the Kapitan Andreevo, Lesovo and Malko Tarnovo border crossings. As a result, the state suffered losses amounting to many millions of leva, while all of this took place with the assistance or tacit inaction of public institutions. It remains unclear, however, whether the PFIA’s findings led to any real consequences for P.F.C. Ltd. or for the officials who allowed these violations to occur.
With the termination of the pre-trial proceedings, it appears that the “Golden Puddle” case will end without either a tax or criminal-law resolution.
The overall picture is stark: a private company received at least BGN 45 million — BGN 33 million in revenue between 2013 and 2019 and BGN 12 million in compensation — from an activity that should essentially have been carried out and administered by the state, while for years the institutions either failed to act or acted in ways that did not protect the public interest.