site.btaVarna Mayor Kotsev Indicted, to Stand Trial with Four Co-Defendants

The Sofia City Prosecution Office (SCPO) has submitted an indictment against Varna Mayor Blagomir Kotsev to the Sofia City Court, the prosecution service said in a press release on Thursday.

The court will presently schedule a preliminary hearing in the case.

Kotsev will stand trial together with four co-defendants: municipal councillors Yordan Kateliev and Nikolay Stefanov, the Mayor's chief of staff Antoaneta Petrova, and company co-owner Ivaylo Marinov. According to the indictment, between July 2024 and the end of May 2025, in Varna (on the Black Sea) and in Sofia, the five conspired to commit bribery and coercion in order to obtain an economic benefit.

The prosecution service said that an unnamed sitting member of Parliament was also involved in the criminal conspiracy. Later in the day, the SCPO specified that the MP in question has not been constituted as an accused party and no charge has been brought against him. The lawmaker is under investigation in a separate pre-trial proceeding.

Kotsev, Stefanov, Kataliev and Petrova are indicted for asking sundry amounts of money in order to influence public officials in making decisions as part of their work. Kotsev is implicated in three such acts, and the benefit he allegedly demanded approximated BGN 370,000. Stefanov allegedly committed one act, asking for nearly BGN 230,000, and Petrova was allegedly involved in one act and asked for an economic benefit of nearly BGN 118,000. 

Separately, Kotsev and Petrova are indicted for demanding nearly BGN 118,000 from businessman Trayan Georgiev in order to exert influence on Varna Deputy Mayor Plamen Kitipov when making a decision on issuing an order to approve a detailed spatial-development plan for regulation and building development and a working spatial-development plan for a particular regulated lot.

In late May 2025, Kotsev and Stefanov allegedly asked BGN 21,000 from businessman Ivelin Ivanov in order to exert influence on Kitipov when making a decision on issuing an order to approve a detailed spatial-development plan for regulation and building development for particular properties in connection with the merger of three lots. 

Kotsev and Stefanov are also indicted for attempting, on September 15, 2024 in Varna, to force company executive director Plamenka Dimitrova to transfer half of the public procurement contracts awarded to her company by Varna Municipality to a company owned by Marinov, threatening that if she failed to do so, they would take over her business. Dimitrova did not comply and alerted the Anti-Corruption Commission.

Kotsev is further indicted for attempting, between November 2023 and March 2024, to force Bilyana Yakova, head of the Varna Integrated Urban Transport Project, which is implemented under a grant scheme, to draw up a request for a capital transfer of over BGN 3 million leva from an account held by Varna Municipality to a company called Gradski Transport. Kotsev allegedly threatened to dismiss Yakova unless she complied with his verbal order. She did not draw the request and was released on April 14, 2024.

The pre-trial investigation was conducted by the Anti-Corruption Commission and was guided and supervised by the SCPO. This investigation was concluded at the end of March.  

Kotsev was arrested on July 8 and has since been in custody despite repeated attempts by his defence lawyers to have him released pending trial. Of the rest of the accused, Marinov was set free back in July, and Kateliev and Stefanov have been under house arrest since early October.