Bulgarian Police Part with Scandalous Private Donations
The Interior Ministry will no longer accept donations from private businesses and individuals after the institution's head, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, signed the order banning donation contracts.
The order, signed Monday, is going to become effective on September 1, 2011.
The few exceptions will include donations from local municipalities and State-owned structures and companies.
The public register of key police donors after January 1, 2011 will be functional beginning October 1.
The European Commission condemned the corrupt donation practice in its report on Bulgaria under the cooperation and verification mechanism, causing Prime Minister Borisov to pledge that the occurrence would be eradicated. In an interview last week, however, Tsvetanov specified that donations would be phased out gradually, rather than rooted out at once./Source: Sofia News Agency/