The spokesman of the EU Anti-Fraud Office OLAF Alessandro Buttice stated Monday there were strong trends showing that Bulgaria's authorities had the political will to cooperate increasingly with his institution.

"It would be unfair to say the problem with corruption does not exist in Bulgaria. What's important is the trend, namely that there are strong declarations on part of the Bulgarian authorities to strengthen their cooperation with OLAF", Buttice said in an interview for the Bulgarian National Television.

Buttice emphasized, however, that OLAF expected specific results in Bulgaria's judicial affairs.

In his words, it would be logical to expect financial sanctions if abuses were uncovered because the EU funds did not come from another planet but were the money of all European taxpayers.

The OLAF spokesman believes that corruption was more of a cultural phenomenon, and that therefore more time was needed to deal with it.

Buttice also explained OLAF was a completely independent organization within the EU, which shied away from all sorts of political instruments, and based its investigations solely on facts.

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