Bulgaria’s State Gambling Commission (SGC) is out the door. The gaming regulator has faced a lot of scrutiny lately, thanks to allegations of corruption and extortion tied to a casino entrepreneur and suspected crime boss, Vasil Bozkhov. With trust in the organization lost legislators set out to change Bulgaria’s outdated regulatory structure, ultimately deciding on handing control over to the National Revenue Agency (NRA). After the bill seeking to make the changes received significant approval, it has continued to progress through the legislative obstacle course, finally making its way to the desk of Bulgaria’s president, Rumen Radev. With that, the SGC is out and the NRA is in. Now, all that remains is to find out if the NRA is up for the task or if, as Bozkhov has asserted previously, government corruption runs so deep that the gambling industry won’t see much of a difference.

Bulgarian lawmakers drafted Bill 054-01-51 to make changes to the country’s gambling act, submitting it for consideration this past June. According to iGaming Business, it found immediate support as it appeared before the Committee on Budgets and Finance, the Committee on Culture and the Media, the Committee on Children, Youth and Sport and the Committee on Budgets and Finance. Then, when presented to lawmakers, it was approved on its first reading on June 17. 

The idea had initially been to create a new regulator to oversee gaming activity in Bulgaria. The State Gambling Agency would borrow some of the policies and procedures from existing gambling regulations, but would be an entirely new entity to be established through the country’s Council of Ministers. That was changed by GERB (the country’s second-largest and conservative political party) lawmakers to put the NRA in charge, and those changes stuck. 

Bozkhov has been fighting extradition from the United Arab Emirates, where he was arrested this past January. He has asserted that political corruption goes all the way to Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and the country’s finance minister, Vladislav Goranov. Alexander Georgiev, the former head of the BGC, was arrested in February as part of a probe into Bozkhov’s questionable activities. That fight will be held at a later date and, in the meantime, Bulgaria will continue to push forward with a complete overhaul of its gaming industry.