In an interview for Nova TV that aired Sunday night, Minister of Interior Ivan Demerdzhiev said that the arrests of the mayors of Belitsa and Sungurlare are not related to the presidential election, which took place on October 25 and November 1. On October 22, the Interior Ministry’s press service reported that three people, including two municipal mayors, had been detained on suspicion of participating in a criminal conspiracy to engage in influence peddling. Later that day, Burgas Deputy Regional Prosecutor Miroslav Iliev told reporters that the prosecution service is investigating whether certain companies were given preferential treatment in winning public procurements in the municipality of Sungurlare, in exchange for which they were required to pay between 25 and 35% of the procurements’ value.
Iliev spoke to the press prior to the regional court hearing, at which the prosecution’s request for the pretrial detention of Sungurlare Mayor Dimitar Gavazov and Belitsa Mayor Radoslav Revanski was to be considered.
Demerdzhiev told Nova TV: “The arrests of the mayors of Belitsa and Sungurlare are not related to the elections. We have been working on this case for a long time. […] We had to take action.”
Commenting on an investigation into the Burgas Water and Sewerage Company, Demerdzhiev said that the investigation expanded, as it identified one company that is directly linked to one of these mayors. The Minister added: “It turned out that the company had won hundreds of contracts throughout the country for extremely large sums. We then determined that the company had not fully fulfilled its obligations under these contracts. In the course of the investigation, evidence ultimately emerged that the funds being siphoned off, both through Burgas Water and Sewerage and through other contracts, were being channeled to specific individuals.”
Demerdzhiev noted that investigators cannot pause their work even if elections are being held at that point. He added that the police did not follow the election schedule but rather the pace of the operations and inspections that had been conducted for months.
On October 29, the Burgas Court of Appeal placed Gavazov and Revanski under house arrest. They face accusations of influence trading and obtaining benefits linked to public procurement worth more than EUR 7 million. Hristo Shirokov, the regional Chair of the MRF in Burgas, is also a defendant in the same case.

Arrests of Mayors of Belitsa and Sungurlare Unrelated to Election, Says Interior Minister 2026 THE NEWS FROM BULGARIA – NEWS AGENCY 2009-2025 2026-11-08 09:10:32

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BULGARIA NEWS – NEWS AGENCY 2009–2026 2026-11-08 09:10:32