Bulgaria to establish anti-mafia measures

BULGARIA PLANS to introduce special legal measures to target mafia groups, prosecutor general Boris Velchev said, as the country’s new government seeks to convince the European Union that it is serious about crushing organised crime and corruption.

“We propose to establish specialised structures of prosecutors and courts for organised crime,” said Mr Velchev, adding that the administration of prime minister Boiko Borisov – a tough-talking former fireman and bodyguard – was now waging “a war on people engaged in killings, racketeering and contraband.”

“We are confronting people who in the past 20 years seemed absolutely untouchable . . . From now on, there won’t be a tendency of convergence of organised crime with the state,” Mr Velchev said, vowing that most of Bulgaria’s 300 main crime bosses would face trial by the end of 2010.

The EU cut Bulgaria’s access to more than €500 million in funding in 2008 because of rampant fraud, and has warned that the country could lose billions of euro in rural and farm aid unless it acts swiftly over illegal land swaps and other dubious activity. Mr Borisov is keen to show progress before the EU delivers its next report on Bulgaria in July.

The head of Bulgaria’s migration police was arrested this week for alleged links to an organised crime group that helped illegal immigrants enter the country, and the head of the national refugee agency has been accused of misusing funds allocated for a new refugee centre.

Earlier this month, police arrested 14 members of a powerful crime gang suspected of money laundering, racketeering, drug trafficking, bribery and tax fraud, which allegedly included a former senior adviser at the state national security agency. Their arrests came in the wake of an operation to smash a kidnapping ring suspected of abducting at least 12 wealthy people in recent years.

Twenty-five people were arrested in that operation, but only nine remain in custody, raising doubts about the Bulgarian system’s ability to make charges stick; since 1989, Bulgaria has failed to convict a single senior official of corruption and has only jailed one crime boss.