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HOT: » Assessing the Legacy of Bulgaria's "Denkov" Cabinet: Achievements, Failures, and What Comes Next
By Vesselin Zhelev
waz.euobserver.com
Bulgaria has deployed helicopters fitted with cameras to fight internal tax evasion, which has become something of a national sport.
Officials from the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency (NRA) are flying over areas where the country's 'nouveaux riches' have built undeclared villas and houses. They plan to use aerial photographs in court to discover where the money to build these residences originated from and to recover unpaid taxes.
Although the helicopters have been flying for over a week there is still no news about the value of their finds, but the images – widely publicised in the media – are impressive.
Travelling over the scenic Rhodope Mountains to the south and along the eastern coast, the helicopter cameras have shot pictures of whole villages of luxurious country houses complete with green lawns and swimming pools. Near the capital Sofia they have spotted posh mansions and even small palaces.
In one of the most dramatic cases, agents photographed a village of around 80 illegal villas built in the mid-1990s in a no-entry safety zone around an artificial drinking-water dam in the Rhodopes. Most of the buildings lack mandatory construction permits and no taxes have been paid for them. They are predominantly owned by customs officers, a group notorious in Bulgaria for corruption.
Prime minister Boiko Borisov has ordered all the dam-side villas to be demolished, and officials in charge of tax and building control to be fired instantly.
"In recent years tax dodging has turned into a national sport," said NRA agency chief Krasimir Stefanov. "It is unusual to play by the rules in Bulgaria and my job is to instil a certain discipline."
But why does it take a helicopter to discover such bulky pieces of real estate? Would it not be easier to drive there or to look in Google Earth?
"Much of the property is hidden in the woods and can't be seen," said NRA spokesman Rossen Bachvarov.
"There are huge paradoxes," said Mr Stefanov. "Houses built in the woods, outside urban regulation lines, without any construction permission and without a single cent paid in taxes."
Bulgarian authorities have turned a blind eye to the illegal buildings during two decades of chaotic post-Communist transition.
"For more than 20 years now the state has been idle or absent," said the Bulgarian agriculture minister Miroslav Naidenov. "Now we have just one option – to demonstrate that it is there."
Mr Stefanov said one in three luxury buildings in Bulgaria are not registered to their real owner but under assumed names, clearly to evade paying tax.
"Physical persons surviving on a minimum wage possess property worth seven-digit sums," he said. "In our practice we meet hundreds of proxies who are jobless, have no incomes, but own property worth millions."
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