Boyko Metodiev Borisov

Public record

Compiled from publications and official records as of 18.10.2026. 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

• Son of a fire-service officer; wanted to study at the State Security school. Borisov has described applying to the Interior Ministry school: "I wanted to apply to one of the two faculties – State Security or the People's Militia" (our translation). Borisov's father was an officer of the fire service, which was part of the Interior Ministry; Dnes.bg wrote in its 2009 biography of Borisov that he worked for the Sofia city directorate of the Interior Ministry. There are two versions of his rank: the fellow villager Vasil Kirov says he "holds the rank of colonel, I think, in the fire service" (our translation; see below), while Narod.bg published a family photo in 2020 in which, according to the site, he "wears a uniform with the shoulder boards of a lieutenant colonel" (our translation). We have not found a document showing his rank. — Economic.bg, interview, 06.04.2012, Dnes.bg, 06.07.2009, Narod.bg, 25.08.2020 (photo), Afera, 11.08.2014
• The "grandfather killed by the communists": Borisov's versions and the accounts of a relative and a fellow villager. Borisov dedicated GERB's election victory of July 2009 to his grandfather Asen, and has since repeated that he was killed by the communists, with changing details. To Economic.bg he said: "They took him from our home on 12 September 1944 and beat him to death with sticks in the cornfield in the yard" (our translation); as chief secretary of the Interior Ministry he found the prison documents, and the death certificate of 26 September reads "Died of erysipelas" ("red wind", our translation); in his own file his grandfather is recorded as a "monarcho-fascist, enemy of the people's power" (our translation). At a Council of Ministers meeting he said instead: "My grandfather was a Nikola Petkov supporter, my file even says 'enemy of the people's power, Nikola Petkov supporter'" (our translation). Speaking online from the village of Bata: "they beat him to death in the yard with sticks" (our translation). Pavlina Skobeleva, his mother's sister, told Standart that Asen Voynov was in fact Borisov's great-grandfather, arrested soon after the communists came to power and beaten to death in Sofia Central Prison, and that Borisov and his sister did not know the details: "Only after the 1990s did we start talking about him" (our translation). Vasil Kirov from Herakovo, whose father was mayor and party secretary of the village after 9 September, also calls the dead man the great-grandfather, but in his account Voynov was beaten to death around 17–18 September at the Third District Station of the militia by two brothers who had been serving a sentence for murder, were released from prison and had just been taken on as militiamen, in revenge over an old land dispute; they "were never members of the RMS, the Komsomol or the BKP" (our translation). Kirov also says that Borisov's maternal grandfather joined the fire service, which was under the militia, and that his father became a BKP member. We have not found a document on Asen Voynov's death. Question to Borisov: will he publish the prison documents and the file he says he has seen? — Economic.bg, 06.04.2012, Haskovo.net, 23.12.2016, Webcafe.bg, 24.07.2021, Standart, 13.07.2009 (archive), Afera, 11.08.2014 (interview of July 2009)
• Commander of an Interior Ministry battalion in Dulovo during the "Revival Process". On the programme "Koritarov Live" on Nova TV in October 2008, Borisov, then mayor of Sofia, said he had taken part "in the processes of the Revival Process": "Since Bulgarian Turks were leaving Bulgaria en masse then, you know, over a million, they left whole villages, the harvest ungathered, there were many fires, there was resistance in this process. And then a battalion from the Higher Institute of the Interior Ministry, which I commanded, was sent to Dulovo" (our translation). Asked whether violence was used, he replied: "Violence from both sides, violence from both sides – from the side of the state and from the side of the resistance then" (our translation). — bgVesti, transcript of Koritarov Live (Nova TV), 27.10.2008 (archived)
• Refuses to depoliticise and leaves the Interior Ministry, 1990. Dnes.bg wrote in its 2009 biography of him: "In 1990 he left the Interior Ministry system, refused to depoliticise and remained a member of the BKP" (our translation). Borisov himself said in an interview published on 9.08.1998: "I will not depoliticise! I remain a member of the party" (our translation; the quote was recalled in 2021 by BSP MP Aleksandar Simov). In March 2022 Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov, a political opponent of Borisov, said at the ministry that Borisov had left it "because he did not wish to depoliticise, that is, to give up his party card" (our translation). — Dnes.bg, 06.07.2009, Fakti, 01.02.2021, Darik, 24.03.2022
• Guarding Todor Zhivkov. In the 1990s Borisov guarded the former communist dictator Todor Zhivkov. Mediapool wrote, from an interview he gave in 2018: "The prime minister tells how in the 1990s he guarded the former communist leader Zhivkov" (our translation); according to Borisov, Zhivkov believed that he, as his bodyguard, was connected with the structures of the state. — Mediapool, 24.04.2018
• The "Buda" file: informer of the anti-organised-crime service, 1996–1998, and the State Security claim. On 3.02.2013 the site Bivol published documents from Balkanleaks according to which on 9.12.1996 Borisov was registered in the operational register of the Central Service for Combating Organised Crime (TsSBOP) as an informer code-named "Buda". The handling officer Mladen Georgiev's proposal says the person should be registered "as an informer with prospects for registration in higher categories of secret collaborator, for which he has the qualities" (our translation). On 24.02.1997 the TsSBOP domestic-terrorism sector also opened an operational surveillance file "Buda" on him "to obtain information on processes of operational interest in the power groupings and structures" (our translation). The Interior Ministry declassified the informer folder: it holds the proposal and a document of 29.01.1998 removing the informer for "lack of environment"; "among them there are no documents showing consent to recruitment by the person, and there are no signatures" (our translation). Borisov said: "I am neither agent 'Buda' nor have I signed any document" (our translation). On 5.02.2013 Bivol also published an explanatory note according to which Borisov was recruited by State Security in the mid-1980s and his file was later purged; the site wrote that it "could not confirm these claims from an independent source" (our translation). — Mediapool, 04.02.2013, Bivol, 04.02.2013, OFFNews (after Bivol), 05.02.2013

Russia

• With Putin in the Kremlin, 2018. After talks with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on 30.05.2018, Prime Minister Borisov announced: "TurkStream enters the territory of Bulgaria" (our translation). Putin said Russia was ready to return to the Belene nuclear power plant project. Borisov added that the gas would also pass through a gas hub near Varna. — Trud, 30.05.2018
• "Balkan Stream". The extension of the Russian TurkStream gas pipeline across Bulgaria to Serbia was built by Borisov's government: "The 474 km pipe was built in only about a year by Borisov's government" (Radio Free Europe; our translation). According to the same source it cost over 3 billion leva from the state budget and lets Russia deliver gas while bypassing Ukraine. In October 2026, after a meeting of the Consultative Council for National Security, Borisov said that as long as "Balkan Stream" works, Putin will not strike Bulgaria; he also said: "We categorically wanted it stated that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine" (our translation). — Radio Free Europe, 09.03.2022, Trud, 08.10.2026
• Lukoil, Valentin Zlatev and the Russian embassy. In a secret cable of 9.05.2006 ("BULGARIA'S MOST POPULAR POLITICIAN: GREAT HOPES, MURKY TIES"), signed by US Ambassador John Beyrle and published by WikiLeaks, the embassy wrote that Borisov "maintains close ties to LUKoil and the Russian embassy", has "close financial and political ties to LUKoil Bulgaria Director Valentin Zlatev", and that "His regular meetings with representatives of the Russian Embassy receive less publicity". As mayor he engaged Lukoil in public-private partnerships, including the upkeep of a Soviet Army monument. According to Bivol, in 2001, when Borisov was chief secretary of the Interior Ministry, Lukoil signed a contract with the security firm Ipon, which he had founded, to guard the Burgas–Sofia oil pipeline. — WikiLeaks, cable 06SOFIA647, 09.05.2006, Bivol, 2020

Corruption and scandals

• The US embassy, 2006: "Madzho" and "the Pasha". In the same cable the US embassy wrote that Borisov "has been implicated in serious criminal activity", that "Borisov is said to have close social and business ties to influential Mafia figures, including Mladen Mihalev (AKA "Madzho"), and is a former business partner of OC figure Roumen Nikolov (AKA "the Pasha")", and that information from a source code-named SIMO "tends to substantiate these allegations" of oil-siphoning, illegal deals involving Lukoil and methamphetamine trafficking. These are allegations in a diplomatic document, not court findings. In 2011 Chief Prosecutor Boris Velchev refused to open an inquiry because the cables contained only allegations. Borisov denied the accusations and claimed that the former Communist Party or BSP paid for the "report" to discredit him (OCCRP, 2012). — WikiLeaks, cable 06SOFIA647, 09.05.2006, Novinite, 02.06.2011, OCCRP, 07.08.2012
• The Bozhkov case and the OFAC document, 2022–2026. On 17.03.2022 Borisov, former finance minister Vladislav Goranov and Sevdelina Arnaudova were detained over Vassil Bozhkov's claims that they had extorted him; Sofia District Court ruled that Borisov's detention was unlawful. On 12.12.2023 the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office closed the case because "no evidence was gathered that categorically and beyond doubt shows" coercion of Bozhkov (our translation). On 31.07.2026, in the case Vassil Bozhkov is pursuing in the US against the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the office filed a document published by the site BIRD: "OFAC established, and the plaintiff admitted, that he made payments to former prime minister Boyko Borissov and former finance minister Vladislav Goranov in return for their giving preferential treatment to his business interests" (our translation from the Bulgarian report). This is a procedural filing by a party to the case, not a court ruling. GERB-UDF replied that the document is a procedural filing, not a verdict, and that presenting individual sentences from it as definitive truth is political propaganda. Borisov has not been sanctioned by the US. — Lex.bg, 14.04.2022, Sega, 12.12.2023, Boulevard Bulgaria (after BIRD), 02.08.2026, BTA, 04.08.2026