Stoyev’s murder occurred within 24 hours of the fatal shooting of the head of a large Bulgarian energy company. Borislav Georgiev, the chief executive officer of a company that maintains the reactors at the Kozlodui nuclear plant, was killed by unknown gunmen in front of his home.
Local observers have noted that the shootings appear to be part of a string of score-settling attacks, killings and bombings that have claimed more than 100 lives in the past few years.
Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, has been frequently criticized for its failure to tackle domestic corruption and organized crime. Both Bulgaria and its neighbor Romania faced an EU-imposed special corruption monitoring scheme when they joined the now 27-nation Union in January 2007. On Tuesday, in the wake of the killings, the EU called on Bulgaria to take “urgent action” to fight organized crime. The European Commission said the killings were not just another statistic. The EU has already frozen some of its infrastructure subsidies for Bulgaria. Agencies have reported that pressure may be growing to impose other sanctions to confront the organized crime problem in the country.
EU experts are slated to visit Bulgaria next week for a report due in July on Bulgaria’s progress towards eradicating contract killings and corruption.
Bulgaria loses EU money because organized crime is winning
In an unprecedented move, the EU has withheld funds from new member Bulgaria because the ineffective measures it’s taken...
