Bulgaria has reported a steady decrease in crime.
In the Danubian city of Rousse on August 27, Interior Minister Roumen Petkov presented a report on the work done by his ministry since he took office after the coalition Government was formed in August 2005.
Petkov said that the report showed that crimes against properties and persons had fallen by seven per cent compared to the same period in 2004-05.
Premeditated crimes fell by 36 per cent. There was a decrease in attempted murder, rape, serious assault and armed robbery. Petkov said that not even a single armed robbery had been registered on the main roads and highways in the past 12 months.
More than 57 per cent of the crimes registered in the past year had been solved and a total of 10 071 perpetrators from previous years had been identified.
Petkov claimed successes in fighting organised crime one of the red areas highlighted in the most recent European Commission (EC) report on Bulgarias readiness to join the European Union.
In the first six months of 2006, the ministry had succeeded in breaking up 47 criminal groups involving a total of 257 people. Thirty-three cases had been sent to court against 84 leaders of such criminal groups and 93 separate investigations were underway against 173 suspects.
Potential losses to the state budget that had been prevented added up to more than 17 million leva, according to Petkov.
The Interior Ministry gave itself a good score in preventing money laundering, another red area in the EC report. Attempts to launder close to 35 million leva had been detected by the ministry, Petkov said.
He said that there had been a considerable decrease in the number of high-profile contract killings. In the past, there had been a series of organised crime hits, often in public.
In the first half of 2005, there were 11 such killings. In the same period this year, the total was three.
Petkov did not say how many of these murders had been solved.
He described as successful his ministrys co-operation with the Finance Ministry and Customs Agency against financial crimes.
Petkov said that there was zero tolerance towards corruption in the Interior Ministry.
A total of 41 ministry employees had been fired, disciplinary sanctions had been imposed on 94 and 30 police officers were given administrative punishments.
A total of 6174 foreigners were barred from entering the country on various grounds, Petkov said.
In the field of human trafficking, Petkov said that 121 traffickers had been arrested.
He said that although many might think that his ministrys efforts in fighting organised crime and corruption were being made because of the EC report, there was a consciously chosen policy that the Government has willingly undertaken against corruption.
The most serious problem that the ministry faced, he said, was the unsolved brutal murder of the Belneiski sisters. The two teenage girls were killed in January in the central city of Pazardzhik.
Petkovs data was slightly thrown out the day after his announcement, when Dragomoir Iliev was shot dead in broad daylight in Sofias Gotse Delchev neighbourhood.
Iliev is known to have been among Bulgarias most notorious car thieves, having specialised in stealing luxury vehicles.
This was not the first time that a murder on the streets of Sofia coincided with statements by Petkov about the decreasing level of organised crime in Bulgaria.
In February this year, Ivan The Doctor Todorov was shot dead in his car in the centre of Sofia, at the same time as the European Union peer review of the Interior Ministrys work. Another widely discussed public murder, that of banker Emil Kyulev, took place on the day when the EC published its monitoring report on Bulgaria in 2005.
