site.btaSofia City Court Annuls Election of Vesela Lecheva as President of Bulgarian Olympic Committee

The Sofia City Court has annulled the election of Vesela Lecheva as President of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee (BOC), according to the court’s decision published on Friday. The proceedings were initiated on the complaints filed by Belcho Goranov, Plamen Krastev, Atanas Tarev, and Hristo Markov, seeking to overturn as unlawful the decisions adopted by the General Assembly of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee held on March 19. They contested the election of Vesela Lecheva as president, the election of a new Executive Bureau and the election of a new Supervisory Board of BOC.

In their claims, the four plaintiffs cited multiple grounds for the unlawfulness of the disputed decisions, including various violations of BOC Statutes regarding the convening of the General Assembly, as the invitation was not sent individually by email or post to all members at least one month in advance, but only to some of them; Lecheva’s candidacy for president was submitted on February 27, later than the required deadline of 20 days prior to the assembly; the delegate of the Bulgarian Field Hockey Federation lacked an explicit power of attorney to participate in the General Assembly, as required by the Statutes; the former, rather than the newly elected, president of the Bulgarian Wrestling Federation, Stanka Zlateva, participated in the assembly as the federation’s representative.

Additional violations cited included the absence of verification of the legitimacy of voting delegates; the use of non-personalized delegate cards, allowing the possibility of voting by individuals who were not BOC members; the participation in the vote of members holding powers of attorney without a decision by the relevant federation’s governing board authorizing such representation; the en bloc voting for members of the Executive Bureau and the Supervisory Board, in violation of the Statutes and without such voting being included on the agenda or approved by the General Assembly; the failure to have the General Assembly minutes signed by both the elected secretary and the president, in breach of the Statutes; and the lack of the required gender balance, as well as the absence of the mandated numerical predominance of sports federations in the newly elected Executive Bureau, in violation of BOC Statutes.

Written responses were submitted by Vesela Lecheva, as defendant in the case. She challenged the admissibility and merits of the claims and requested that the proceedings be terminated.

After reviewing all written evidence submitted in the case, the Sofia City Court upheld the claims as well-founded and annulled the decisions of BOC’s March 19 General Assembly concerning the election of a new president, Executive Bureau, and Supervisory Board.

“The court’s main reasoning is that Lecheva’s candidacy and that of her team were submitted outside the deadline established in the statutes, and that, without an explicit decision of the General Assembly, the candidacies for president and for the committee’s governing bodies were voted on en bloc, which breaches the rules of the Statutes,” attorney Nikolay D. Dimitrov said.

The Bulgarian Olympic Committee has been ordered to cover the plaintiffs’ legal costs, including state fees and attorney’s fees.

The deadline for appeal of the decision before the Sofia Court of Appeal is two weeks.

After the court decision was published, Vesela Lecheva and her team announced they would appeal the Sofia City Court decision to annul the election of the new leadership of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee.

Lecheva’s legal team issued the following statement: “Eight claims were filed against the election of Vesela Lecheva and the Executive Bureau. This was not accidental and was obviously intended to create legal chaos. At this point, there is a court decision in force confirming the legality of the election and the decisions of the General Assembly of March 19, 2025. In a second case, there is a second decision confirming the legality of the election and all decisions of the General Assembly of March 19, 2025. It is surprising how, in the same factual situation, different judicial panels can issue and justify radically different decisions.”

On November 17, another panel of the Sofia City Court dismissed claims filed by the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation against the decisions of the General Assembly of BOC held on March 19. On October 29, the court dismissed another appeal filed by the Bulgarian Badminton Federation and ruled that all decisions of the General Assembly of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee were valid and lawful.

The newly elected BOC leadership, headed by Lecheva, has not yet been registered in the Commercial Register due to ongoing court appeals. On May 17, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that it had provisionally recognized the results of the BOC Elective General Assembly on March 19, 2025, confirming that Lecheva and her team are the only individuals authorized to represent the BOC to the IOC, within the Olympic Movement, and at all IOC-recognized events and Games.