EU: Ahead of a crucial EU report on whether Bulgaria and Romania can join the EU next year, Jamie Smyth visited Bulgaria to assess its fight against crime and corruption.
Ivo Markov was gunned down as he got out of his car near his house in Sofia last Wednesday. The 42-year-old was shot in the head and chest and left to die in his car park.
Markov, who owned a beach and a hotel in one of Bulgaria's Black Sea holiday resorts, was known to police and allegedly connected to drug gangs. The mafia-style murder - the first for three months - was reportedly the 123rd contract killing in five years in Bulgaria. No one has been prosecuted for any of them.
The Markov murder could not have come at a worse time for the Balkan state, which is nervously awaiting a final monitoring report from the EU tomorrow on its readiness to join the union.
A draft, which has been seen by The Irish Times, shows that the European Commission has serious doubts about Bulgaria's record in fighting organised crime and reforming its judiciary.
"Indictments, prosecutions, trials, convictions and dissuasive sentences remain rare in the fight against high-level corruption," says the report, which will be discussed by all 25 commissioners before they make a decision on whether the country can join in 2007 or must wait until 2008.
The report says urgent action is needed in investigating and prosecuting crime networks, fighting fraud and corruption and enforcing anti-money-laundering provisions.
The recommendations mirror similar studies which have highlighted corrupt links between business, politicians, organised crime and judges.
"In Bulgaria, the susceptibility of the public and private sector to corrupt practices is increasingly used by organised crime to perform various illicit operations as well as to further legalise some of its operations," concluded a recent study by an independent think tank in Bulgaria, the Centre for the Study of Democracy.
Its report also found that 2005 marked a reversal of the positive trend in the decline of corruption seen since 1998, although it is now running at half the level of 1998.
On the streets of Sofia the public show little faith in the police, the prosecution service, judges or politicians and there is a keen awareness of crime.
Some of the city's nightclubs have signs warning patrons not to carry guns, while at the airport immigration desk a poster says "payments are not accepted" to gain entry.
"There is a lot of mafia and corruption here. It is very bad for Bulgaria and for our joining the EU," says Lili, a teenager standing a few hundred metres from an "EU clock" in central Sofia counting down the 257 days to Bulgaria's earliest possible EU entry date of January 1st 2007. "I want to trust the politicians but I don't," says Lili, who wants EU entry as soon as possible to help her travel abroad more easily.
Polls conducted by the social research firm Vitosha Research show that 71 per cent of Bulgarians say that "nearly all or most" customs officials are involved in corruption. Three in five people said that "nearly all or most" judges are corrupt - the second highest result recorded for 17 different types of public servant in Bulgaria.
Sitting in his office above Sofia's national court, Boris Velchev, the newly-appointed Bulgarian prosecutor general charged with getting results in the fight against organised crime and public sector corruption, insists things are getting better.
"The judicial system is not corrupt," says Mr Velchev, a former college professor.
"There is a lot of corruption and we have to identify corrupt magistrates. But I believe in the integrity of the young magistrates who join the system to undertake what is a very difficult job."
He says a lack of public trust in the judiciary and the heavy workload for prosecutors and judges - just 1,400 magistrates for 268,000 ongoing cases - are problems.
To try to prevent prosecutors taking bribes, their salaries have been increased to €750 per month - significantly above the average monthly wage of €180.
People suspected of offering bribes to the judiciary are being offered a non-prosecution deal in return for information and the immunity of corrupt politicians is being lifted, says Mr Velchev.
He believes that the process of reforming the system will be a long one, however.
New statistics drawn up by Mr Velchev's office claim 26 organised crime gangs have been broken up in 2006; investigations have been initiated into 234 mafia members; 26 cases of counterfeiting were investigated; and 22 charges have been submitted to court against three members of parliament - one a former mayor of Sofia.
"I think the pressure we have been subjected to by Brussels has been fruitful. It has had an effect on the judiciary," says Mr Velchev, who hints that further action against corrupt officials will take place in coming days.
A few hours later its emerges that the deputy head of Bulgaria's state agriculture fund is being charged with taking a bribe. But German experts sent to Sofia by the EU to assess the situation remain unconvinced.
Klaus Jansen, a German police investigator, delivered a report to Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn recently that detailed Bulgaria's lax approach to tackling people-trafficking, prostitution and the counterfeiting of goods, and systemic failures in bringing to justice those responsible for contract killings.
Meanwhile, Susette Schuster, a German judge, wrote in a separate report that there was "open nepotism" in the appointment of judges, and that judicial reforms undertaken were "chaotic".
"After last year's election there was inevitably a slowdown in reform," says Bulgaria's prime minister Sergei Stanishev. "But it has been a good eight months."
Mr Stanishev lists a number of achievements, including electing a new prosecutor general, introducing amendments to the constitution to implement judicial reform and bringing two prominent crime bosses - the Marinov brothers - to trial last month.
The trial could see the first conviction of crime bosses for ordering a contract killing.
The rapid rise of organised crime and the mistrust of officials in Bulgaria - a phenomenon not seen to the same extent in Romania - is a product of mistakes made during its transition from communism, according to Mr Stanishev, who pinpoints the purging of magistrates and a mishandled privatisation process as the main causes. "A magistrate is not created overnight," notes Mr Stanishev wryly.
There are also structural weaknesses in the Bulgarian political system, say experts.
Aware of the tight control that the executive held over the judiciary during the communist era, the fathers of the Bulgarian constitution gave total independence to the judiciary, says Ivanka Ivanova, legal director at the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute in Sofia.
"This independence was a bad shelter for abuse of powers."
In March, the governing coalition passed amendments that made it possible to remove judges on the vote of a two-thirds majority of MPs.
The two key figures in Bulgaria's fight against organised crime and corruption, Mr Stanishev and Mr Velchev, are united in the belief that postponing EU membership would only undermine their efforts to clean up society.
"Frankly speaking, any delay would make my job much harder," says Mr Velchev.
"It would mean that our efforts have not been appreciated, which would demotivate the system."