CSD Policy Brief No. 13: Effective Policies Targeting the Corruption – Organized Crime Nexus in Bulgaria: Closing down Duty-Free Outlets
CSD Policy Brief No. 13: Effective Policies Targeting the Corruption – Organized Crime Nexus in Bulgaria: Closing down Duty-Free Outlets

Author(s): Author Not Specified
Subject(s): Public Administration, Economic policy
Published by: Център за изследване на демокрацията
Keywords: corruption;
Summary/Abstract: Duty-free trade-related smuggling of excise goods has been one of the most potent and sustainable sources of political corruption in Bulgaria for the last fifteen years. The operation of land border area outlets has been a major channel for flooding the Bulgarian market with tons of illegal cigarettes and alcohol and the sale of millions of gallons of excise-free petrol. The resulting profit, running into hundreds of millions each year, has been funding many a Bulgarian party and has become the foundation of untouchable political oligarchies. While the fortune of other illegal markets has ebbed and flowed, duty-free shops and petrol stations have enjoyed the protection of all governments since the beginning of the 1990s. Several attempts to close them down have come against the significant state-capture power of the duty-free operators. Not only have their operation not been curtailed following Bulgaria’s EU membership – as members of the Bulgarian government have insisted and pledged to do – but a law was passed granting duty-free operators the right to offset closures of their units along Bulgaria’s EU external land borders' entry routes with new ones at the EU external borders’ exit routes with Turkey, Serbia and Macedonia.

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