FIVE BULGARIAN BORDER POLICE OFFICERS DETAINED OVER ALLEGATIONS FOR ACCEPTING BRIBES FROM PEOPLE TRAFFICKERS

Bulgaria’s specialized prosecutor’s office pressed charges against 5 border police officers from the town of Elhovo for allegedly receiving bribes from people traffickers, the Prosecutor’s office said on 9th of February. The traffickers smuggled foreign nationals from Turkey to Western Europe and paid bribes to the border authorities at the checkpoint.

The group of five border police officers were detained in a special operation carried out by the “Internal Security” directorate of Bulgaria’s Ministry of Interior and under the supervision of the specialized Prosecutor’s Office on 8th of February. According to the prosecution, the group is believed to have been running the bribery scheme since July 2015 and the detained officers helped various people traffickers to smuggle illegal migrants. The bribes were to the amount of 500 euros for one migrant.

The administrative manager of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office said that the collected evidence so far showed that the police officers not only asked for and accepted bribes to let migrants across the border, but also to act against competitive people-traffickers.

The prosecutors do not have information about the number of illegal migrants, which the border police officers managed to get across the border until the time of their arrest. It is not yet clear how much money they received from bribes. At the time of the arrest, the police found 5,000 US dollars in one of the detained border police officers.

The administrative manager of the Prosecutor’s Office says that according to the collected evidence so far, the money were allocated to the deputy head of the checkpoint, who was also among the group of the detained.

The criminal scheme was disclosed as a result of information from people-traffickers.

The border police officers were detained for 24 hours. The Prosecutor’s Office will demand that they be remanded in custody. If the allegations are proved in court, the officers may face from 5 to 15 years of imprisonment.

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