Vasil Bozhkov, known as the Bulgarian El Chapo, exposed himself as a mafia boss via Facebook post, which guaranteed him a long stay behind bars. After sending Sicilian style messages to prosecutors, who are investigating him, the gambling boss with 19 felony charges confessed that he was behind dozens of crimes and contract killings of enemies, who are inconvenient for him. In another pasquil, Bozhkov, who is hiding in Dubai, in a typical mafia way threatened again to the lawmaker from the opposition party Movement for Rights and Freedoms and publisher of Telegraph Media Delyan Peevski. 

"Well, I don't know about the protests abroad ... but I'll make it up!" Do you remember this winged blunder of the lover of protests and indicted oligarchs - the journalist from Bozhkov TV, as bTV became known, Kanna Racheva? In fact, "I'll make it up" is not just a talk or a blunder, it is a diagnosis. Of a whole guard of court freelance journalists serving the behind-the-scenes propaganda and manipulation machine of the same indicted oligarchs. The evidence is so much that, as in the old joke about the cops, we do not longer dare to open our fridge - a former State Security agent not to jump out from there.

Radio Free Europe’s job is not to defame public figures and institutions. It is not, but that is exactly what the Bulgarian desk of this media outlet is doing. Systematically and purposefully at that. Almost with conviction. But even the worst expectations for this (anti)Bulgarian branch of this otherwise well-respected radio station could not have foreseen the recent brutal admission of disregard for journalistic principles on its part.

The standards of even the most credible publications can come crashing down when it comes to the Bulgarian reality and its fake-news-steered public consciousness. Examples abound. The latest, but surely not last, one comes courtesy of the online publication of Der Standard.

Some (well-known) oligarchs have been skillfully exploiting the ongoing protests as a lifejacket at sea. They have been funding protesters (by Vasil Bozhkov’s own admission) or opting for an easier and cheaper option – using Prokopiev’s mainstream media machine to run their own talking points, their distorted version of events, their defensive theses.

Socialist functionary Rumen Ovcharov, who was recently convicted of financial crimes, appeared on bTV, which has become known as Bozhkov TV because of its ties to Vasil Bozhkov (the Bulgarian El Chapo), to defend his protégé Kornelia Ninova, who served as his deputy minister in the Sergey Stanishev cabinet.  

The news website Frognews, sponsored by fugitive banker Tsvetan Vassilev, is the epitome of a cesspool, a sewer draining all kinds of slime. Any politician who cannot catch on with a party and any informer of the former State Security is welcome to spill his guts there. There is only one condition – to libel lawmaker from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) Delyan Peevski, no matter what, all the while pretending to fight against those in power. Which does not make much sense since Peevski is an MP from an opposition party.

Who turned the country into a sieve?

Who is stealing directly from our pockets through electricity and natural gas bills that have been artificially pumped up for decades?

Who turned our hospitals into hostages of a pharmaceutical giant, sending the healthcare system into decay?

There are no ministers under the control of Peevski, there is a prime minister. That flabbergasting nonsense, part of the talking points of the oligarchy, was uttered by Vladislav Panev, a Sofia municipal councilor and an old associate of Ivo Prokopiev.

Do you know how billions can disappear overnight and a state can wake up with skyrocketing hyperinflation? Perhaps not, but you can always fill in the blanks by questioning former vice-PM and minister of economic development in Videnov’s infamous cabinet Rumen Gechev, who has risen from the ashes of the 1990s bank collapses after socialist leader Kornelia Ninova personally installed him as BSP lawmaker and vice-chair of the budgetary commission at the current National Assembly.