Three suspected crime bosses in custody and awaiting trial are planning to stand in a Bulgarian election in July that could give them parliamentary seats and immunity from prosecution.
Bulgaria, which joined the EU in 2007, is under growing pressure from Brussels to crack down on organized crime.
The Socialist-led government has also been hit by a wave of protests against economic hardship and corruption.
Plamen Galev, arrested with his business partner in January on charges of racketeering and running an organized crime group, plans to run in the July 5 vote as an independent candidate in the southwestern town of Dupnitsa, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
Local council officials said that Galev and his partner Angel Hristov effectively ran Dupnitsa for years through contacts in the police, courts and tax authorities.
They have come to symbolize a climate of impunity in the Balkan country since the collapse of communism 20 years ago.
Father and son Veselin and Hristo Danov, in custody since September on charges of extortion, money laundering and luring people into prostitution, will also run for parliament in the Black Sea city of Varna on the ticket of a local party.
Electoral Commission officials said there were no legal grounds to bar the three from the election.
Bulgaria has so far failed to convict a single senior official of corruption and has sent to jail just one crime boss since the fall of communism in 1989.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung (袁國勇) has done battle with some of the world’s worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify, and he has a warning. Another pandemic is inevitable and could exact damage far worse than COVID-19 pandemic, said the soft-spoken scientist sometimes thought of as Hong Kong’s answer to former US National Institutes of Health director Anthony Fauci. “Both the public and [world] leaders must admit that another pandemic will come, and probably sooner than you anticipate,” he said at the city’s Queen Mary Hospital, where he works and teaches. “Why I make such a horrifying prediction
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
INDICTED: US prosecutors said Sue Mi Terry accepted fancy handbags, luxury dinners and thousands of dollars in payments from South Korean intelligence A former CIA employee and senior official at the US National Security Council has been charged with allegedly serving as a secret agent for the South Korean National Intelligence Service, the US Department of Justice said. Sue Mi Terry accepted luxury goods, including fancy handbags, and expensive dinners at sushi restaurants in exchange for advocating South Korean government positions during media appearances, sharing nonpublic information with intelligence officers and facilitating access for South Korean officials to US government officials, an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan, New York, says. She also admitted to the FBI that she served as a source