The "Bulgarian Las Vegas" will not see the light of day

Foreign investments in Bulgaria have been stagnant for nearly 15 years. And despite the apparent movement in 2023, the situation remains unchanged - the country has difficulty attracting large foreign investors. More than once there has been a situation where a large potential investor gives up and chooses another destination (sometimes one even outside the European Union).

Yet, even the mention of potential interest from a major investor, which the Bulgarian politicians in power are always quick to brag about before going mum (case in point: VW, e.GO, Tesla, etc.), is received with great enthusiasm by the public.

This was the scenario that also surrounded the story of the Chinese investor that wanted to build a huge resort near Sofia, dubbed as the "Bulgarian Las Vegas".

The history of the resort

The news about the spectacular investment first appeared exactly 10 years ago - in 2014, when Bulgaria Development Holdings Limited EAD received a state certificate for a priority investment project. The expiry deadline of the certificate was August 2017, but the then Minister of Economy Emil Karanikolov decided to extend it until August 2019.

The idea was to build an indoor water park, hotels, casinos, a mall, a concert hall, and a number of other facilities on land with an area of ​​over 88 hectares between the villages of Ravno Pole and Musachevo. The planned initial investment was for over 750 million euros, subsequently though the amount discussed bubbled up to 1.5 billion euros.

The official name of the project was "Holiday and entertainment resort "St. Sofia". The goal was to create one of the largest tourist and entertainment complexes in Europe, including hotels, conference halls, exhibition halls, indoor water pool and green areas.

One of the key figures in the Chinese investor company was Steven Lo, a billionaire from Hong Kong. Since 1985, the businessman has been involved in real estate, food and beverage, fully owning and operating the only 2 department stores in Macau.

The failed project

In 2019, it became clear that the Chinese company had sold the land plat and was looking for a new one near ​​the village of Katina, at the foot of Stara Planina Mountain.

To date, not only has the project not been implemented, but Capital Concept Limited AD (ed. note - this is the parent company under whose umbrella Bulgaria Development Holdings Limited EAD was established in 2014) was also forcefully delisted from the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE).

On 4 April this year, the Bulgarian Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) announced that it was removing the shares of Capital Concept Limited from the public registry maintained by the regulator. The reason was that the company had not published an annual report and other documents required by law on time – and the last time this had happened was in 2021.

The company, which had an unrealistically high market valuation of 8.2 billion euros, was the largest company by capitalization on the BSE. However, it is hard to say that there is any foundation behind this value - its last recorded transaction dated to February 2022. Following a decision by the Financial Supervision Commission, the stock exchange stopped trading its shares at the end of October, as Capital.bg wrote.

Although it doesn’t really operate and generates no revenue, over the years Capital Concept Limited has managed to attract Chinese companies and individuals as shareholders. As Capital.bg wrote in 2020, the investments made in it corresponded to the requirements for the so-called "golden visas" and "golden passports" that could then be obtained after substantial investments.

The Bulgarian parliament finally terminated these programs at the end of March 2022.

Dashed hopes for Bulgarian tourism

The loudly proclaimed intentions of Chinese investors to turn Ravno Pole into the center of tourist entertainment in Europe brought great hopes to the tourism sector in Bulgaria. Over the years, several meetings were organized between the investors, government representatives and the subsidiary organizations on the occasion of the project.

On the website of Bulgaria Development Holdings Limited EAD there are many videos of the meetings in question, where representatives from the National Board of Tourism and then Minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova can be seen highlighting the potential of Bulgaria to the Chinese investors and thanking them for choosing the country.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov