The Media About Money Laundering Related to Human Trafficking

The media evaluate as a crucial problem that in Bulgaria the earnings obtained from human trafficking are turned into legal revenues. RiskMonitor’s Conference, held on Tuesday, in which experts discussed different aspects of the issue, received a wide media coverage appearing on the first page of most daily papers.

The strongest media reaction was to some of the data presented by Georgi Petrunov, among which his estimation that the annual earnings acquired by Bulgarian human traffickers in Central and Western Europe amount to roughly 1 billion euros. It is within these countries where the Bulgarian prostitutes lead the charts in quantity – in Belgium they have a leading place in the market share, while in France and Slovenia they are second placed.
The Dnevnik daily newspaper /“Money is laundered in agriculture, tourism and shops”/ and the 24 Chasa daily newspaper /“human traffickers launder their money in agriculture, they drain out European funds”/ express strong interest not in the illegally acquired earnings, obtained from human trafficking, but in the areas of business where the money is eventually laundered.

The electronic journal mediapool.bg is among the few media to lay emphasis on the opening remarks presented by Mr. Alexander Karagiannis, US Embassy in Sofia Chargé d’Affaires. According to Mr. Karagiannis legal authorities are lagging behind in their work against the criminals.
Most newspapers underline the amounts Greek families are willing to pay - 18 thousand euros for a baby boy and 14 thousand euros for a baby girl. These numbers, as well as some other details about the deals with newborn children, were presented by Antoaneta Vassileva, General Secretary of the National Anti-Trafficking Commission, Council of Ministers.