The “mutri” in international press

The links between Bulgarian crime and politics are the main subject of a whole page in the New York Times. The article by Doreen Carvajal and Stephen Castle is an extended version of a publication in the New York Times of the same day. It begins with the statement that “politics is played to the death in Bulgaria”.

The authors describe spectacular killings from the past two years and refer to connections of Bulgarian politicians with the underworld. They use as examples meetings of the former minister of interior Roumen Petkov with the so called “Galevi brothers” and the donations to the Bulgarian Socialist Party made by the notorious “Nikolov-Stoikov group”.

The paper also calculates the amounts allocated to the “most corrupt country” in the EU: 11 billion euro from the EU and another 90 million to be invested by the US for joint military exercises. Once shady business types realized how much EU money was at stake,  they moved from buying off politicians directly into politics, authors say.

The paper quotes more than 15 sources of information, among them analytic reports from international organizations, video recordings from Bulgaria and EU investigative reports. Executive director of RiskMonitor Stefan Popov is quoted as saying that Bulgaria does not have solid criminal structures like the ones in Sicily or New York: “The bad guys are insiders. It's one thing to have some mafia guy corrupting officials. It's quite different if the mafia guy becomes the public official.“

Read the full text of the article.