What are Bulgarians regularly coming in pickups doing here, residents of the Herzogenbuchsee municipality in Northern Switzerland ask themselves according to Swiss website Blick.de.

In a report on scrap metal trade, the outlet claims the suspicious Bulgarians who arrive there are "self-employed scrap traders" who collect old iron and used tools and devices to sell them to recycling companies in the region.

Bekim Krasniqi, a Kosovar who owns one such company, is quoted as saying he has already bought second-hand devices and scrap materials from Bulgarians.

Those Bulgarians purporting to be tourists who explain, in broken German (according to the quotations) they aren't in the region to work, but to purchase old cars and motorcycles and to export them to Bulgaria, Blick.ch writes.

A number of vans with Bulgarian license plates have been arriving there "for months" by night, and it is hard to see what is in the vehicles, since black sheets are cast over the windows.

For what they are doing no VAT or other taxes are paid by them in Switzerland, Blick claims. Moreover, they are not registered at the municipality, a step required by anyone who stays in Switzerland more than nine days and is self-employed.

Swiss police say that if any illegal stay or activity are established, the Bulgarians will be handed to the migration service.

The "traders", however, live on quite a busy thoroughfare, one of the most attractive places to live in the municipality. The person who rents apartments to them says tenants change every two to three months.