July 5, 16
More than one in five Bulgarians – 22.2 per cent of the population, or 1.3 million citizens – admit having taken part in some form of corrupt practices in Bulgaria in 2015, a report of the Sofia-based Center for the Study of Democracy, CSD, presented on Monday, said.
By comparison, the share of Bulgarians admitting such practices in 2011 was only 9.4 per cent of the population. Experts say administrative corruption in Bulgaria has reached a critically high level, with key public institutions being “captured” by private interests.
They conclude that a drastic surge in corruption in Bulgaria started in 2013, a year which saw continuous political instability, with two governments resigning and two interim governments being formed. “The level of corruption that we are witnessing is so high that it has become the new normal,” Ruslan Stefanov, from CSD, said in Sofia.
The experts identified seven spheres in Bulgarian public life that suffered most from systematic corruption. Among them are the public procurement system, the hidden economy, the justice and monitoring systems, the media and taxation.