A number of Bulgarian mainstream media outlets have mounted an unusually rigorous smear campaign against investigative journalism website Bivol.bg, an OCCRP partner.

The campaign, featuring journalists criticizing and investigating their peers, started two weeks ago and targets Bivol’s editor-in-chief, Atanas Chobanov (pictured, above), and Bivol’s founder, co-owner and director Assen Yordanov.

Chobanov and Yordanov say the campaign was sparked by Bivol’s publication of investigations into alleged corruption, the draining of cash from a Bulgarian bank through offshore companies, and abuse of European Union funds. The stories implicate several Bulgarian bankers and politicians, including the Bulgarian media mogul and lawmaker Delyan Peevski.

A wave of damning articles about Yordanov, Chobanov and Bivol have appeared and continue to appear in the Bulgarian weekly Politika (Politics), the dailies Telegraph, Monitor and Trud (Labor) and the news website Blitz. All are either owned and controlled by or linked to Peevski, who is a member of Parliament from the party largely representing the Muslim minority in Bulgaria, Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF).

The articles allege that Yordanov, winner of the Leipzig Media Award (also known as the European Pulitzer) and the only Bulgarian listed in Reporters Without Borders’ “100 Information Heroes,” is using Bivol to publish fake stories with the sole purpose of blackmailing businesspeople and politicians. Similar allegations have been aired on the state-owned Bulgarian National Television.

Bivol, which has run stories about environmental issues, is accused in the articles of serving the interests of fake eco-activists who pose as people concerned about the environment to extract cash from firms that want to build in the Bulgarian mountains and on the Black Sea coast.

The articles denounce Chobanov on a variety of fronts, saying he was an activist for Komsomol (the youth division of the Bulgarian Communist Party) before the fall of the Berlin Wall; that he had aspirations to a political career and had switched between political parties; that he was linked to alleged Bulgarian oligarchs (particularly a businessman whose media strongly oppose Peevski); that he spied for foreign intelligence services; and that he lives a luxurious life in Paris where he milks the social welfare system.

He is described as greedy, aggressive, mentally unstable, narcissistic, disliked and unwanted.

The campaign is unusual in its scale, although similar articles have appeared over the years in fewer numbers. In 2012, after Bivol became the official partner of Wikileaks for Bulgaria, the Bulgarian daily Standard (also linked to Peevski) published an article about Chobanov, hinting that he had written the leaked US diplomatic cables himself, based on rumors, and sent them to Wikileaks. Wikileaks tweeted at the time: “Nasty smear campaign against our Bulgarian partner Bivol.bg”.

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