Blagomir Rubinov Kotsev

Public record

Compiled from publications and official records as of 01.11.2026. Every statement links to its source; claims made by others are marked as such, with who makes them. Quotations in English are our translation.

Communist Party and State Security

• The father and Energoimpex: claims without a document. During the 2023 mayoral runoff the site Vest, citing Rikoshet, wrote that the end of socialism found the father, Rubin Kotsev, and his partner Chavdar Angelov in prestigious positions at the foreign-trade company Energoimpex, and that foreign-trade companies were then under the patronage of the General Staff's intelligence directorate. Filter repeated in 2025 that he had been a senior employee of Energoimpex, that such companies were controlled by the First Chief Directorate of State Security, and that in the 1990s the two were the largest importers of coal from Russia, with partners from a Moscow business group linked to Neftinvestbank, which it does not name. Neither outlet cites a document about Kotsev himself; according to Filter he held no public posts and was therefore never checked for whether he was a State Security officer or agent. In 2004, when Rubin Kotsev was kidnapped, Mediapool wrote that his company Achileos "started work about six years ago importing coal from Ukraine for the Varna power plant" (our translation), and News.bg reported that it carried coal from Ukraine to Turkey. — Vest, 25.10.2023, Filter, 29.11.2025, Mediapool, 17.03.2004, News.bg, 17.03.2004

Corruption and scandals

• Bribery charge over a food supplier. Filter describes the indictment against Kotsev, municipal councillors Yordan Kateliev and Nikolay Stefanov, businessman Ivaylo Marinov and the head of his office Antoaneta Petrova: 12 offences in total. The prosecution alleges that Kotsev and the councillors asked Plamenka Dimitrova for a bribe of 228,000 leva to influence deputy mayor Dian Ivanov in choosing the contractor for a food supply contract. Dimitrova is the main witness and filed the signal in 2024. Mediapool notes that under the previous mayor, Ivan Portnih of GERB, she regularly won food contracts for kindergartens and schools and lost tenders after the administration changed; her appeal to the Commission for Protection of Competition found nothing wrong and the decision was upheld by the Supreme Administrative Court. — Filter, 29.11.2025, Mediapool, 23.10.2026
• Bribes from businessmen and coercion of an employee. Filter writes that the charges against the mayor also include bribes requested from businessmen Trayan Georgiev and Ivelin Ivanov in return for permits for changes to development plans and for construction. According to the outlet he is also charged with coercion: from the end of November 2023 to the end of March 2024 he forced the employee Bilyana Yakova, head of the urban transport renewal project, to transfer a little over 3 million leva to the account of Gradski Transport, stating that otherwise she would be dismissed. According to the outlet, she did not make the capital transfer request and was dismissed. — Filter, 29.11.2025
• A witness withdraws his statements. BNR Horizont reported that Dian Ivanov, a former deputy of Kotsev, his long-time lawyer and family friend and one of the two main witnesses in the case, withdrew his statements of 8 and 9 July, arguing that they were given under pressure from an inspector of the anti-corruption commission. The prosecution had cited him as confirming the words of the businesswoman Plamenka Dimitrova that she was asked for a bribe of 15 percent of the value of a public contract. The mayor's lawyer, Ina Lulcheva, told BNR she was not surprised and linked his presence in the case as a witness rather than an accused to pressure to speak in a certain way. — BNR Horizont, 16.07.2025
• The Appeal Court returns the case to the prosecutors. According to Eurocom, the Varna Appeal Court, on a protest by the prosecution, upheld the ruling of the Varna Regional Court and finally terminated the proceedings against Kotsev, Kateliev, Stefanov, Marinov and Petrova. The case was returned to the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office "because of material omissions in the indictment" (our translation). The court said that concrete facts on the time and manner of reaching the criminal conspiracy and on its participants are missing, that the purpose of the conspiracy is unclearly stated and that the party and the election campaign are not identified; there were also gaps in the coercion charges and in the charges of benefit requested. In the court's view the omissions can be remedied, and the ruling is final. — Eurocom, 14.08.2026
• Investigation partly terminated. The prosecution has partly terminated the investigation against Kotsev, Mediapool reports, citing DeFakto. The terminated part is the one alleging that he committed a corruption offence in Sofia together with a person with immunity, i.e. an MP; the reason given is lack of evidence for that claim. His lawyer Ina Lulcheva confirmed the news to the outlet and said the termination shows an abuse of power by the prosecution, which had charged him with complicity with an unknown MP and maintained the charge until then. — Mediapool, 23.10.2026
• New charge over a 2022 contract. According to Budna Varna, citing 24 Chasa, the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office charged him over the time he was regional governor: between 1 April and 2 August 2022 he attempted to knowingly conclude a disadvantageous deal, a contract for legal services between the regional administration and a law firm. The prosecutors say the deal could have caused a loss of 23,256 leva; 11,808 leva were paid and the remaining nearly 12,000 leva were not, because he was meanwhile dismissed from the post. The charge is under Art. 220(1) with Art. 18(1) of the Criminal Code. — Budna Varna, 16.10.2026
• The family complex Horizont loses a case over state properties. News.bg, citing BiTV, writes that the Horizont complex in Varna, owned by Kotsev's family, was ordered to pay nearly 380,000 leva for using parts of state properties in the Sea Garden without grounds. The Varna Appeal Court held that Overseas-Horizont AD used two plots in the Saltanat locality, of about 3,500 sq. m in total, without the right to do so; the land is state property given to Varna Municipality to manage. From August 2018 to January 2022 gazebos, canopies, pergolas and other structures stood on part of it. The company must vacate and hand over the land used outside the permitted areas. The Supreme Court of Cassation refused to hear its appeal and the ruling is final. — News.bg, 13.07.2026
• Shares of a family firm through offshore companies. Bivol describes a deal for 1,660,659.24 leva, the value placed on the shares of Overseas-Horizont OOD, which according to the outlet Kotsev effectively buys and pays to his father through offshore companies: Horizont Property Investment Incorporated of the Marshall Islands, whose proxy in Bulgaria is Blagomir Rubinov Kotsev, buys the shares of All Seas Limited of the British Virgin Islands, whose representative in Bulgaria is his father Rubin Kotsev. Kotsev told Bivol that the offshore companies belong to his parents and that he was only a manager of some of them. — Bivol, 29.10.2023

Other

• Detention, bail and the removal attempt. Eurocom reports that Kotsev was detained on 8 July 2025 and that his lawyer described the action as repression. According to RFE/RL, the Municipal Election Commission had scheduled a session on his early removal from office, then decided to request new documents and take up the question on another day; it had received several signals that he does not go to work, and GERB called on its members in the commission not to support the removal. At the end of November 2025 he returned to the mayor's office after release on bail. — RFE/RL Bulgarian service, 24.11.2025, Eurocom, 14.08.2026