Bulgaria police raid farm ministry over land swaps
18 Mar 2009 12:54:11 GMT Source: Reuters
* Officials suspected of large scale illegal land swaps * Bulgaria under EU pressure to fight corruption SOFIA, March 18 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's national security agency and prosecutors raided the Agriculture Ministry on Wednesday and seized documents in an investigation into large-scale illegal land deals. The raid was part of Bulgaria's drive to assure the European Union it is serious about fighting chronic corruption and organised crime. Brussels has punished Sofia for failing to produce results by freezing large amounts of EU aid. Prosecutors are investigating swaps of thousands of hectares of state-owned arable land and forests for private land that took place this and last year, the Sofia City Prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov said, without giving further details. Land swaps have become a major source of corruption in the EU newcomer in the past several years because a real estate boom made state and municipally owned land on the Black Sea coast and in mountains extremely valuable. "We have been informed by the chief prosecutor's office, which got signals from the National Security Agency, that officials at the agriculture ministry have allegedly made illegal swaps of land," Kokinov said. "When we collect enough evidence about concrete people, we will raise charges," he said. The Agriculture Ministry declined comment, saying it would issue a statement later in the day. Bulgaria has lost 8 billion levs ($5.33 billion) in the past four years due to swaps of high quality state-owned land for cheaper, fragmented private land, according to a report by an anti-corruption coalition of 30 non-government organisations. Sofia-based independent, anti-graft Centre for the Study of Democracy said in a recent report that the swaps had become "the most conspicuous and intolerable form of political corruption in Bulgaria in 2008." In January, lawmakers introduced a moratorium on all land swaps under pressure from dozens of environmental groups, which last year sent a complaint to Brussels to urge the EU to intervene to prevent destruction of forests and nature parks. Bulgaria has so far failed to convict a single senior official of graft and has sent to jail only one crime boss. Observers and diplomats say the root of the problem lies in links between politicians, magistrates and crime bosses, some of who sprang from the Communist era secret services. (Reporting by Anna Mudeva; Editing by Charles Dick)
Workers from Bulgaria's largest steelmaker Kremikovtzi attend a protest in central Sofia March 9, 2009. Workers at the troubled steel mill, which employs about 5,000-6,000 people and gives incomes to 100,000, ...
