Wealth defence strategies of Bulgarian Oligarchs in the 1990s

The rise of the ownership concentration has become a significant political and economic issue and one of the biggest policy questions in the newly forming democracies after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. The so-called oligarchs have attracted great interest due to their influence in policy-making, whereby they pursued their own agenda. Much less systematic attention has been, however, devoted to how they do so. In this article, I use the concept of wealth defence to scrutinize the strategies of Bulgarian oligarchs for securing their fortune in the period between 1989 and 1997. This article reveals, contrary to the theoretical literature’s assumptions, that in a country where the rule of law was lacking, the oligarchs did not resort preferably to an actual assumption of power by holding a state office. Since their property rights were weak, they re-insured their property by employing a different set of strategies to ensure risk diversification