Bulgaria Customs Head Exposes Extreme Corruption, Mafia

Crime | October 29, 2009, Thursday

Bulgaria's Customs Agency head Tanov (left) has told the Parliamentary Anti-Corruption Committee of extreme corruption in the customs. Photo by BGNES

The head of Bulgaria’s Customs Agency, Vanyo Tanov, has exposed a number of corruption schemes and abuses in his administration.

During his Thursday’s hearing at the Parliamentary Anti-Corruption Committee, Tanov said the situation at the Customs Office of the Sofia Airport was extremely bad, and there were no guarantees that the customs duties there are actually collected.

“The storage facilities are often without any customs control, and the corruption is extremely high,” Tanov said as cited by the BTA.

A report on the corruption in Customs dated to 2008 states that 27 customs officers are known with gangster-type nicknames. According to Tanov, 70% of those individuals are still employed at the Customs Agency.

According to the Chair of the Parliamentary Anti-Corruption Committee, Yane Yanev, about 70 customs officers have fake university diplomas.

Most of the fake diplomas are from the Southwestern University in Blagoevgrad, and the Economy Academy in Svishtov. In Yanev’s words, those diplomas were printed “on the conveyor belt”.

After Tanov’s hearing, Yanev also said several dozens of relatives of customs officers were also employed at the Customs Agency. Their figure will go up tremendously if the customs officers’ relatives working at other agency are added.

Tanov has revealed that Bulgaria’s imports of base oils were enough to supply all of the EU. The reason for that is that the base oils get mixed with gas, and then sold at gas stations around the country even though that is illegal.

According to Tanov, a Ruse-based firm has evaded paying fuel excise tax worth BGN 200 M, whereas a firm from Plovdiv has evaded paying alcohol excise for BGN 80 M. He has not revealed the names of the firms.

Tanov has explained that the contraband was about 30%-40% of Bulgaria’s total import even though he could not announced the exact figures.

Next week Tanov is going to initiate procedures for the laying off of 200 Customs Agency employees because of the inflated staff numbers.