Police raid Bulgarian ministry in land swap probe

(SOFIA) - Bulgarian prosecutors and police raided the ministry of agriculture in Sofia on Wednesday and confiscated documents as part of a investigation into possibly fraudulent land swap deals, prosecutors said.

The deals, in which state-owned land was allegedly swapped for private plots in less attractive or lower-priced parts of the country, took place over the past few years, Sofia city prosecutor Nikolay Kokinov explained.

He said the investigation concerned swaps of "large plots of land in different regions of the country" but did not provide details as to the potential scale of any fraud.

A recent report by the Sofia-based think-tank Centre for the Study of Democracy cited swaps of highly attractive state-owned plots of farming land and forests at the seaside for cheaper private plots within the country as "an outstanding area of huge corruption risk."

According to the NGO, Bulgaria's lost revenues to unprofitable land swaps last year stood at 1.5 billion leva (750 million euros, 984 million dollars).

Environmentalist protests prompted parliament in January to introduce a moratorium on swaps of state-owned and municipal property.

But Kokinov suggested Wednesday that the ministry might have continued approving the illegal swaps by dating the necessary documents as if they were signed before the ban.

Agriculture Minister Valery Tsvetanov declined to comment on the police and prosecution operation Wednesday.

Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007 but massive corruption and fraud concerns already earned the country the image of the most graft-ridden member of the 27-nation bloc.