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HOT: » Assessing the Legacy of Bulgaria's "Denkov" Cabinet: Achievements, Failures, and What Comes Next
By Kerin Hope and Nikolay Petrov in Sofia
Financial Times
Bulgaria’s informal indicator of organised crime activity – fleets of black SUVs filled with shaven-headed men in dark suits – has fallen sharply in central Sofia and other cities over the past 12 months, according to the interior minister.
“We’ve identified the criminal groups, almost 200 in all, and gone after them. They don’t flaunt themselves around the city centre the way they used to,” Tsvetan Tsvetanov said in an interview with the Financial Times.
However, he admits it will be hard to overcome the western image of Bulgaria as a country where corrupt judges acquit mobsters, mafia bosses control city halls and dishonest civil servants siphon off European Union funds.
“We had to tackle serious problems ... a kidnapping of a high-profile businessman every month, a high rate of contract killings ... and links between mafia groups and senior politicians,” he said.
Mr Tsvetanov, an anti-trafficking expert before he entered politics, took his current post a year ago, when the right-of-centre Gerb party swept to power at national elections on a platform of cracking down on organised crime and high-level corruption.
He insists progress has been made, with more than 150 alleged members of mafia groups in custody and another 600 under close surveillance. A dozen members of the kidnapping gang have been arrested. Only two contract killings have taken place this year compared with two or three a month at the height of the so-called mafia wars in the mid-2000s.
High-level corruption is also being addressed, he says. Four cabinet ministers in the previous government face corruption charges. Sergey Stanishev, the former prime minister, was indicted last month for mislaying classified documents, while this month Ahmed Dogan, leader of the ethnic Turkish political party the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, was ordered to stand trial on embezzlement charges. Both men deny wrongdoing.
However, critics say the crackdown has not gone far enough. “In many respects it’s superficial, aimed at impressing public opinion rather than going after entrenched mafia bosses with successful front businesses,” said Ognian Shentov, head of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, a Sofia think-tank.
The European Commission said in June that Bulgaria had stepped up its fight against high-level corruption and organised crime, but noted that “too few cases are concluded in the courts” – a reference to weaknesses in the judiciary.
Mr Tsvetanov said there was little accountability among judges. “It’s a problem because there’s no official mechanism for cleaning up the judiciary and because so many judges are entangled in corruption.”
Boris Velchev, the chief prosecutor, said the situation was improving as the number of convictions in organised crime cases had risen 20 per cent last year.
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