Mario Sarafov, an anaesthesiologist in the urology department of Sofia's Pirogov emergency hospital, was arrested on February 15 while receiving a bribe from a patient.
Sarafov will be detained for 24 hours. If proven guilty, he will face disciplinary dismissal from the hospital, a representative of Pirogov said. Speculation in Bulgarian-language media say that the bribe was for about 60 leva.
The alleged bribe is an amount much lesser than the one asked for by one Stoyan Pernishki, a surgeon in the same hospital last March. Pernishki asked for a 1500 leva bribe from a patient's wife, who managed to collect just 300 leva. The surgeon was arrested while in possession of the marked notes. Again last March, a medic from Stara Zagora was arrested on allegations of issuing fake medical statements at the price of 20 leva each.
Reacting to the news in Parliament, Health Minister Radoslav Gaidarski said that he was not surprised. It was obvious to everyone that such unpleasant incidents involving medics had started happening quite often as of late, Gaidarski was quoted as saying by mediapool.bg.
What had happened was a disgrace to the profession, he said. There was an agreement reached with Pirogov's head Dimitar Radenovski that when such incidents happened, the reaction would be firm, Gaidarski said.
Sarafov's arrest came two weeks after the European Commission published on February 4 its interim report on Bulgaria. The report had as one of its main concerns corruption in the country. The report said that it was particularly concerned about the areas of fighting high-level corruption and organised crime, whereas efforts to fight corruption within local government should be strengthened further to achieve better results.
As reported previously, two National Road Infrastructure Fund (NRIF) employees, the director for the department for absorbing European funds, Lyubomir Lilov, and his subordinate Ivan Vladimirov, were arrested on January 24 for taking a 25 000 leva bribe. It was the first payment in a 50 000 bribe that they had asked an architect for. In return, the architect Georgi Yanev was going to receive approval and fast-track treatment for a construction project involving changing the zoning of agricultural land near Hemus Highway.
All this eventually led to the EC asking Bulgaria to suspend payments of European Union funds managed by the NRIF for road infrastructure projects until the investigation of the two NRIF officials accused of corruption was over.
Sarafov will be detained for 24 hours. If proven guilty, he will face disciplinary dismissal from the hospital, a representative of Pirogov said. Speculation in Bulgarian-language media say that the bribe was for about 60 leva.
The alleged bribe is an amount much lesser than the one asked for by one Stoyan Pernishki, a surgeon in the same hospital last March. Pernishki asked for a 1500 leva bribe from a patient's wife, who managed to collect just 300 leva. The surgeon was arrested while in possession of the marked notes. Again last March, a medic from Stara Zagora was arrested on allegations of issuing fake medical statements at the price of 20 leva each.
Reacting to the news in Parliament, Health Minister Radoslav Gaidarski said that he was not surprised. It was obvious to everyone that such unpleasant incidents involving medics had started happening quite often as of late, Gaidarski was quoted as saying by mediapool.bg.
What had happened was a disgrace to the profession, he said. There was an agreement reached with Pirogov's head Dimitar Radenovski that when such incidents happened, the reaction would be firm, Gaidarski said.
Sarafov's arrest came two weeks after the European Commission published on February 4 its interim report on Bulgaria. The report had as one of its main concerns corruption in the country. The report said that it was particularly concerned about the areas of fighting high-level corruption and organised crime, whereas efforts to fight corruption within local government should be strengthened further to achieve better results.
As reported previously, two National Road Infrastructure Fund (NRIF) employees, the director for the department for absorbing European funds, Lyubomir Lilov, and his subordinate Ivan Vladimirov, were arrested on January 24 for taking a 25 000 leva bribe. It was the first payment in a 50 000 bribe that they had asked an architect for. In return, the architect Georgi Yanev was going to receive approval and fast-track treatment for a construction project involving changing the zoning of agricultural land near Hemus Highway.
All this eventually led to the EC asking Bulgaria to suspend payments of European Union funds managed by the NRIF for road infrastructure projects until the investigation of the two NRIF officials accused of corruption was over.
