Bulgaria Businessmen Give BGN 10 000 Award for Vote-Buying Evidence

Anyone who presents evidence for vote buying during Bulgaria's European Parliament Elections will receive an award of up to BGN 10 000.

The award was formally announced Thursday in the southern city of Plovdiv. It is provided by the Union for Economic Initiative, a national organization of Bulgarian employers.

The exact amount an informer would receive depends on the value of information, according to the organizers of the campaign.

"The vote-buying signals must be supported by testimonies and evidence because this type of crime is hard to prove", said Teodor Dechev, the Deputy Director of the Union, as cited by Darik Radio.

Three of the organization's members have already donated funds for the future awards designed to help combat vote-buying. The origin of their funds has been inspected; the money provided by another candidate-donor are under inspection.

Dechev announced all major political parties had offered money for the anti-vote buying award, but the Union for Economic Initiative turned them down because that would a conflict of interests.

According to Dechev, there will be a lot more signals for vote-buying during Bulgaria's Parliamentary Elections in July, because the MP seats are more attractive than the MEP seats.

The other Deputy Director of the Union, Hristo Gagov, pointed out that through vote-buying many people managed to launder their murky money and to transform them into political influence at the same time, which then brought them "clean" money through the instruments of political corruption.

Gagov stressed the Union's campaign did not technically aim at stopping vote-buying because in his words that would be impossible. Rather, its aim is to create fear among those who are engaged in that sort of activity.

The rationale of the businessmen providing the money for the anti-vote-buying awards is that it would be better for them to pay a few thousand BGN in order to prevent vote-buying instead of allowing suspicious individuals to buy their way to political power, and then abuse millions or billions of state and EU funds.

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