ACF: Kovachki runs an energy cartel and corrupts politicians

Six years ago, Capital wrote that Hristo Kovachki probably controlled the largest private energy business in Bulgaria. On paper, however, he has nothing to do with any of these companies, because the traders, the Brikel and Bobov Dol power plants, the heating companies, and others are owned by individuals with no business history here or abroad. In 2023, EPPO announced it was conducting a large-scale investigation, with more than 40 searches and dozens of interrogations, into whether there were false measurements of CO2 emissions from related companies.

Now, for the first time, in internal documents provided to the ACF from the archives of the companies themselves, Kovachki is directly named as the real head of the invisible energy holding company with a turnover topping 5 billion levs per year (according to data from 2023), including 11 power and heating plants, several coal mines, numerous gas, electricity, carbon emissions, and biomass traders, as well as pension, insurance, transport, and repair companies. The investigation presents internal documents containing evidence of:

• Coordinated actions by energy companies in Kovachki's cartel and manipulation of prices on the free electricity market;
• Draining of profits from the holding's thermal power plants through fictitious transactions with so-called buffer companies;
• Concealment of more than 900 million levs in undistributed profits for 2023 alone from the companies in the holding company and non-payment of hundreds of millions owed for social security contributions and taxes, which the institutions remain blind to (Kovachki's coal mines are among the largest debtors to the National Social Security Institute);
• Regular payment of unregulated "financial incentives" to state officials by companies in the holding company;
• Granting of six-figure loans to politicians;
• Control over senior managers in the structure and control over politicians by obligating them to pay millions of levs with promissory notes to the holding companies;
• Returning money under the table in fictitious biomass supply deals for the purpose of carbon emissions fraud;
• Leaking information about upcoming inspections by EPPO.

Chicko Trevichko's holding company, managed with children's stamps

All documents are stamped with specially made stamps featuring cartoon characters, which employees within the system know to be Hristo Kovachki's de facto personal signature. "If you see a stamp, it's God's law," says an employee of the holding company, whom ACF talked to. The stamps are changed periodically, as in a secret organization, and their replacement is approved by order of the boss. All his orders come from the same email address: [email protected].

Hristo Kovachki

Although there is a ban on mentioning Kovachki's name in writing, ACF has documents in which it has appeared, as well as information that the businessman visits the holding company's central office every day at 34 3020 Street in the Moderno Predgradie neighborhood of Sofia. This is where most of the companies are registered. Internal documents also show schedules approved by Kovachki for weekly meetings between him and the heads of the most important, supposedly unrelated companies in the holding company - in Reception No. 2 on the 6th floor of the building at 34 3020 Street.

Formally, highly paid managers run the companies. In practice, however, every important decision is made by Kovachki, and the directors are personally liable for millions to the companies they supposedly manage - with promissory notes signed by them. For example, according to ACF, Desislava Filipova, Hristo Kovachki's PR representative and owner of a total of 16 companies in the holding, has signed a promissory note for 2.5 million levs. Dimitar Ivanov, former head of Kovachki's security and director of Tibiel, one of the largest gas traders in the holding company, has committed himself to a sum of 3 million levs.

The owners of more than 70 of the companies in the holding are registered abroad. The documents show that despite the lack of formal links between them, the firms in the holding company work in sync. In addition, the coordinated actions of energy traders allow for market distortions and increases in electricity prices, which are passed on down the chain in the form of higher prices for almost all goods and services.

The investigation also reveals a document from December 2023 proposing to provide "additional financial incentives" of 2,000 levs per month to the chief architect of the Bobov Dol municipality, Yordan Vasilev, for "quick and smooth preparation and approval of documents" for the Bobov Dol Thermal Power Plant, the largest power plant in the holding company. At the end of April 2025, Vassilev was appointed director of the National Institute for Immovable Cultural Heritage. There is another credit to a company owned by the father of WCC MP Dzhipo Dzhipov.

Lastly, it seems that Kovachki's long arm has reached as far as the EU prosecution. Witness accounts published in the ACF investigation reveal that information about the planned inspections and searches by EPPO at the headquarters and offices of companies belonging to the Kovachki group in 2023 was leaked in advance to the energy businessman, and evidence of abuse was destroyed. "We call on all competent authorities to take timely and responsible action to investigate the leaked information," Boyko Stankushev, director of the ACF, said.