National Revenue Agency boss Maria Mourgina says that her agency is investigating more than 300 senior Government officials and big business people for tax evasion, given the significant discrepancies between their declared incomes and their assets.

The beginning of 2008, the agency chose 50 000 people to investigate on the basis of the expensive properties and luxury vehicles that they owned. This was narrowed to 1800, Mourgina said.

As quoted in Bulgarian-language media reports on November 26 2008, Mourgina said that more than the current 325 Government officials and business people would be investigated. A significant number of those who were of interest to the agency were "well-dressed business people," as Mourgina put it.

The agency was pursuing hidden income and profits, not sensation, she said. The step was intended against the concealment of illegal incomes, she said.

Media reports cited the example of Plovdiv-based rapper Vanko Edno, found guilty of forcibly procuring women for prostitution, who had a jeep that he said he had bought with money borrowed from his grandmother.

Investigations by the National Revenue Agency had found that in the past five years, 450 million leva that had changed hands in Bulgaria had been "borrowed from relatives". Less than one per cent of this sum had been repaid.

In September 2008, it emerged that the National Revenue Agency office in the south-eastern Bulgarian town of Haskovo had found that 14 cases of discrepancies between property ownership and declared income.

The NRA office in Haskovo had checked 16 Bulgarians, all owners of newly-built and up-scale housing and commercial properties. Of them, 14 would be subjected to to tax audits after tax inspectors found they were in possession of undeclared assets or had submitted inconsistent tax returns, Bulgarian news agency BTA reported at the time.

Checks similar to those in Haskovo had been launched in Plovdiv, Sofia, Varna and Bourgas, the agency's Silvia Genova told The Sofia Echo in September.

"These checks are not something that we at headquarters in Sofia have decided to do nationwide, but are regular part of the work of every regional branch," Genova said. "We will check people who have bought real estate worth at least 100 000 euro and who have bought motor vehicles worth at least 80 000 euro."