Stefan Marashev, the head of customs at the Bulgarian-Turkish border checkpoint in Svilengrad will be dismissed, Bulgarian news agency Focus reported on August 21 2008.

An order for Marashev's dismissal has already arrived at the regional customs directorate in Plovdiv, under whose jurisdiction Svilengrad's customs are, Focus said. The order is dated August 15 2008.

According to Focus the reason for the dismissal was Marashev's violations which has led to tens of millions of leva in losses caused in the process of rebating excise duties.

Svilengrad's customs was one of the many Customs Agency (CA) units that was checked in the past two months. When on July 17, CA officers stormed the premises of Svilengrad's customs to collect documents, Marashev's comment concerning accusations of malfeasance was “blah-blah”, Focus said back then.

He has been in his job for the past six years and, according to Focus, his position was highly coveted due to large amounts of Turkish cargo that pass through the Svilengrad customs.

Regardless whether that speculation is close to truth, Marashev's dismissal is just the latest that have followed the appointment of Hristo Koulishev as head of the CA on May 30 2008.

When presenting his new team on June 24, Koulishev said that there was a certain number of customs officials who gave the agency a bad name. Koulishev said he would get rid of employees who had not been acting in the best interest of the CA.

When Koulishev's predecessor Assen Assenov resigned citing fatigue, he was quickly followed by several high-ranking CA officials. The first two were Assenov's deputies, Georgi Grigorov and Alexander Rakov, who resigned minutes after Assenov.

On June 6, Dimcho Kiryazov, the head of CA's regional directorate in Bourgas, filed his resignation together with Mihail Gochev, the head of Bourgas customs.

Next were Kiril Yordanov, customs chief in the town of Rousse on the Danube River border with Romania, who was temporary replaced by Stefan Zlatanov, who is deputy-head of the regional customs directorate in Rousse.

Ivan Kozhouharov, the deputy head of the Kalotina checkpoint at the border with Serbia was also on Koulishev's list for CA's dismissals.

In other news, on August 19 Interior Minister Mihail Mikov dismissed a police official working at the Bulgarian-Greek Koulata border checkpoint for helping a person with an interdiction to leave the country cross the border.