The next such meeting, involving the Commission, the US, and the Bulgarian authorities, will take place on 9 and 10 June.
According to the documents seen by EURACTIV Bulgaria, the caretaker government in Sofia is struggling to provide guarantees by the time of the meeting that the reform of the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad would indeed take place.
As early as January 2019, EURACTIV wrote that the mess with the “passports-for-cash” criminal scheme was a matter of serious concern for the law-enforcement services of Bulgaria’s allies.
However, under the previous government, the main interest was that the investigation should not reach the high-level politicians who engineered the scheme, said sources in Sofia.
For oligarchs or Mafiosi, obtaining a Bulgarian passport is easy and cheap
The case of the Russian oligarch Sergei Adoniev is a good example for the obscure ways Bulgarian citizenship is being granted to paying clients. Free Europe Bulgaria broke the story on Tuesday (22 January) a day before the EU Commission will issue a warning against “golden passports” schemes.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
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Source link : https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/us-warns-bulgaria-to-clean-up-the-passport-for-cash-mess/
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Publish date : 2021-06-02 07:00:00
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