Bulgaria’s “most flamboyant”
politician may also be one of its most
corrupt, said Frank Stier. Delyan
Peevski (pictured), 35, self-proclaimed
political wunderkind and deputy of
the largest Bulgarian Turkish party,
Movement for Rights and Freedoms,
is a mountain of a man, and he knows
how to throw that weight around.
When Peevski was 21 and still in law
school, his mother – a media mogul
and the former head of the national
lottery – secured a ministry of
transportation job for her son, which
gave him control of Bulgaria’s large
Black Sea port of Varna. Four years later, with his law studies still underway, Peevski was made
deputy minister of disaster management policy, giving him the power to bestow lucrative contracts
on construction and other firms. “Like no other, he personified the oligarchic system of clientelism.”
His rich mother helped him by buying up several prominent newspapers, and their editors say that
Peevski personally “instructed them which politicians to protect or attack”. Last year, over the
course of a single month, Peevski bought up three factories, a TV station, and an electronics chain.
“Peevski is simply one of the tools the mafia uses to blackmail Bulgarian business,” says former
business partner turned foe Tsvetan Vassilev. “He’s just the visible part of a very large iceberg of
corruption.” Bulgaria is a European Union member – will the EU start investigating?
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