Since 2005 Borisov has served as Sofia’s mayor, and has earned the nickname “Batman” for his habit of appearing clad in black at crime scenes to assure the press that justice would be served. In 2006 Borisov founded the GERB (Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria), a center right party emphasizing law and order and increased European integration.
Borisov’s political career began in earnest during the early days of Bulgaria’s post-communist era, when the ex-police officer founded “IPON 1,” a security agency that specialized in debt collection and provided bodyguards to Bulgaria’s most powerful figures, including the disgraced communist dictator Todor Zhikov, and former Tsar and later Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg.
Throughout the 90s and the present such security agencies have been widely reported in Bulgarian media to have acted as fronts for racketeering and extortion outfits in the country. Borisov’s was one of the most prominent of these agencies.
Joint Firms with “The Pasha”
Borisov has also set up several joint firms with Rumen “The Pasha” Nikolov, often described in Bulgarian media as one the country’s most powerful organized crime figures, and a former head of the Interior Ministry.
Borisov has claimed these enterprises were solely intended to promote their shared interest in karate, and that none registered any income.
The enterprises included a private security company Tsebra, and two trading companies, Teo International and Interbulpred. Borisov’s involvement in the latter company, which was a subsidiary of Intergroup – successor to the defunct insurance company SIK – led to an unsuccessful investigation into possible conflict of interest in 2005, while he was mayor of Sofia.
Borisov’s connections to Saxe-Coburg led to his appointment as Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry from 2001 to 2005, a position Borisov used as a springboard for national attention, and where he first began to seek publicity and cultivate his strongman persona.
In March 2007, however, Borisov once again came under scrutiny after Congressional Quarterly reported on an investigation conducted by U.S. Law Enforcement on behalf of a Swiss financial house that found Borisov was “a business partner and former associate of some of the biggest mobsters in Bulgaria.” The investigation suggested that Borisov used his position to help favored organized crime associates eliminate their competition.
Borisov has called the report a fabrication by his political enemies in Sofia who used the American organ to compromise his image.
Sretan Jocic and the Past
Then, in April of this year, when Sretan Jocic, aka Joca Amsterdam, currently awaiting trial for organizing the assassination of Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanic, told a Belgrade court that he had received Borisov’s protection as early as the 90s, when Jocic was operating in Sofia, and that the two had been business partners.
The Croatian paper Jutarnji List has reported that, according to diplomatic sources, Borisov turned on Jocic in 2004 after pressure from the European Commision during Bulgaria’s EU accession negotiations, after which Jocic was extradited to the Netherlands.
Jocic’s testimony sparked the Bulgarian parliament to launch an inquest into the accusations. Borisov, however, was cleared of any wrongdoing.
For now, Borisov has remained above the accusations, and with his victory in the recent election seems to have successfully convinced much of the Bulgarian public of his slogan, “I am the only solution for crime and corruption.”
A Dutch foreign correspondent in Bulgaria has said Borisov won “because he was the best among the bad.”
And in an encouraging development Monday, Parliament head and member of Borisov’s GERB party Tsetska Tsacheva announced plans to prevent Bulgarian MPs from enjoying immunity from prosecution, Sofia Echo reports. This loophole was exploited by a half dozen criminal suspects in cases involving embezzlement and human trafficking who stood for election in July, all of whom were granted immunity.
---Michael Mehen
