Bulgarian Football Union president under investigation amid ‘black lottery’ allegations

Media have accused Borislav Mihaylov of involvement in manipulating the results of matches.

Bulgaria.- The Bulgarian Prosecutor’s Office has confirmed the launch of an investigation into Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) president Borislav Mihaylov. The investigation comes after several media outlets printed allegations claiming that Mihaylov has been involved in ‘black lottery’, a term referring to unlicensed foreign gambling operations.

It’s been claimed that Mihaylov was involved in manipulating the results of football matches. There have been public protests in Sofia calling for an end to Mihaylov’s lengthy tenure at the helm of the BFU. Allegations of misconduct against Mihaylov are not new. In 2022, Bird.bg published a picture showing Mihaylov with the alleged Singaporean match-fixing boss Tan Seet Eng (Dan Tan) on New Year’s Eve in 2011.

The Prosecutor’s Office said it was investigating “numerous publications in the media containing information about committed violations and/or crimes of a different nature (expenditure of public resources, ‘black lottery’, etc.).”

Earlier this month, the National Revenue Agency (NRA), which regulates gambling in Bulgaria, reported that over 24,000 people have registered with the national gambling self-exclusion scheme since it was relaunched in December last year.

The system had been halted amid the regulatory changes that gave the NRA the responsibility for overseeing the gambling sector in 2020. Access to the register is limited to certain employees, but gambling operators can request access in order to monitor their customer base and identify players who have self-excluded. Anyone can sign up to the register for a minimum of two years either at an NRA office or online.

In September, the NRA announced that it had blocked access to over 150 gambling websites. The action was taken as part of an enforcement campaign against unlicensed activity.