Corruption in Bulgaria

Corruption in Bulgaria has decreased in recent years, after a series of reforms implemented through EU guidance. Among recent improvements, amendments to the constitution in 2015 brought about a reform of the Supreme Judicial Council and a stronger judicial inspectorate. Furthermore, the broader legislative framework has seen a number of reforms over the years, in particular through the amendments of the Judicial System Act in 2016 and of the Criminal Procedure Code in 2017.

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is released by Transparency International at the beginning of each year. The report is based on the polling of experts from around the world on topics such as a free press, integrity, and independent judiciaries. In the CPI, lower-scoring countries experience "untrustworthy and badly functioning public institutions like the police and judiciary."

In the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, Bulgaria scored 43 on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"). When ranked by score, Bulgaria ranked 76th among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison with regional scores, the best score among Western European and European Union countries was 90, the average score was 64 and the worst score was 41. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 90 (ranked 1), the average score was 43, and the worst score was 8 (ranked 180).

A 2014 study by Transparency International indicated that lobbying in Bulgaria is mainly unregulated and happens behind closed doors. "The report Lobbying in Bulgaria: Interests, Influence, Politics shows that there are significant deficits in the transparency, integrity, and equality of access regarding influence over public decision-making in the country." The study used a framework from a project called "lifting the lid on lobbying," and Bulgaria received a "paltry overall score of only 25%." For transparency, Bulgaria received a score of 13%; for integrity, 25%; and 38% for free quality of access. By 2014, four legislative proposals had been introduced in Bulgaria's parliament, but none of the bills had been passed.

During the 2014 parliamentary election, Bulgaria's Transparency International telephone helpline received 202 complaints. One of the top three complaints concerned vote-buying. A pub owner in a small village offered Roma voters US$40–$55 to vote a certain way, with the money paid only if the political party in question won. Some 480,000 illegally printed ballots were discovered at a printing house in Kostinbrod the day before the May 2013 parliamentary election. The blank ballots might have been prepared to manipulate the vote. The owner of the printing house, a municipal councilor from GERB, claimed that the ballots were technical spoilage.

In 2017, the Council of Europe expressed concern about the lack of judicial independence and the compromised separation of powers in the country. The Venice Commission has raised concern about the Soviet model of Bulgaria's Prosecution, which turns it into "a source of corruption and blackmail." Civil activists have demanded the resignation of Bulgaria's General Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov for some time now, due to his alleged involvement in high-profile corruption cases.

Government procurement is an area of significant corruption risk. Many of the public contracts are awarded to a few politically connected companies amid widespread irregularities, procedure violations, and tailor-made award criteria. Ognyan Gerdzhikov's interim government found widespread violations in defense procurement after it took over from the Second Borisov Government in 2017; 45 out of 82 defense ministry contracts signed the previous year were in breach of public procurement laws and regulations. Fraud was strongly suspected in nine of the procedures.

An estimated 10 billion leva ($5.99 billion) of state budget and European cohesion funds are spent on public tenders each year; nearly 14 billion ($8.38 billion) were spent on public contracts in 2017 alone.