Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry and State Agency for National Security have bust a major criminal organisation trading in votes ahead of the country’s July 5 2009 national parliamentary elections, Bulgarian National Television reported on July 3.
 
Arrests have been made and there would be further arrests.
 
Sofia deputy city prosecutor Roman Vassilev said that the operation against the vote-buying outfit had started about a day before.
 
How many people had been detained and the number of votes bought would not be disclosed for now, Vassilev said, saying that the operation was still in progress.
 
The operation was in connection with the country’s European Parliament elections held in June 2009. It is a sequel to surveillance operations that have lasted some time.
 
The June European Parliament elections in Bulgaria saw a number of mutual accusations among political parties of vote-buying.
 
Election rules compel campaign advertising in this year’s Bulgarian parliamentary contest to say that buying and selling of votes are illegal. The maximum jail sentence for vote-buying in Bulgaria is six years.
 
Dnevnik, quoted Bulgarian news agency Focus, said that four people had been arrested in seven areas of Bulgaria and evidence related to alleged vote-buying confiscated, including identity cards, passports and driving licences.
 
Quoting AFP, Focus said that a court in Plovdiv had given a man a one-year suspended sentence and a 10 000 leva fine for attempted vote-buying. The man was reported to have gone house to house, offering 30 leva a vote on behalf of a "small nationalist formation".
 
The mayor of the village of Banya was given a 10-month suspended sentence and a fine for giving seven voters 10 leva each for their ballots in the European Parliament elections.