16 Oct 2008

Bulgarian corruption troubling the European Union

Politics is played to the death in Bulgaria, where the lives of politicians can be as cheap as spent bullets and murky business groups wage a murderous struggle for their cut of everything from real estate deals to millions in European aid.

During a furious political season last year, the home of the chairwoman of a municipal electoral committee was set on fire and the garages of mayors were firebombed. The mayor of a golf resort town in central Bulgaria was shot and killed with seven bullets - the same number that killed the wealthy city council chairman in the outwardly idyllic Black Sea port of Nessebar.

"Other countries have the mafia," said Atanas Atanasov, a member of Parliament and a former counterintelligence chief who is a magnet for leaked documents exposing corruption. "In Bulgaria, the mafia has the country."

International Herald TribuneWikipedia

More on Bulgaria on this MySpace page