Six Bulgarian referees have been banned from football for good for officiating at international matches in South America and not informing the Bulgarian Football Union about their presence there.

Luchezar Yonov, Petar Tarulov, Emil Mitev, Penyo Tashev, Ruslan Minchev and Veselin Rashkov were in charge of games at Under-20 international tournaments in Venezuela and Argentina back in 2010. All of them received personal offers from the "Exclusive sport" agency without telling the national body, thus breaching its ethics code.

The wrongdoing was revealed after it turned out that the Hungarian referee, who presided over the suspicious international friendly between Bulgaria and Estonia, was also present at one of these tournaments.

FIFA and UEFA are currently investigating the Bulgaria-Estonia friendly amid strong allegations of match-fixing. The match ended 2-2 with all four goals coming from the penalty spot.

Furthermore, the game was organized by the Thailand-based agency "Footy Sport International", while Russian Sergey Protsenko acted as an intermediary despite not holding a license by a FIFA manager. The same people organized the previous match between Latvia and Bolivia, in which all three goals were also scored from penalties.

It is still unclear whether the banned Bulgarian referees participated in match-fixing schemes during their secret stays in South America.