Bulgaria

How stronger borders can create smarter corruption: lessons from one of Europe's most strategic border crossings

When Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, many believed it would lead to more secure, transparent and less corrupt borders. New regulations, infrastructure modernisation and digitalised customs procedures all followed. European standards and money arrived together. Yet corruption did not disappear at the Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint, the main land crossing between Bulgaria and Türkiye and one of the busiest gateways between Europe and Asia. Instead, it evolved. This is the central finding of a recent article by the Prevention, Research and Innovation team of the Basel Institute on Governance – Dr Jacopo Costa, Dr Claudia Baez Camargo, Noémi Jäger and Dr Saba Kassa – published in the Journal of Illicit Trade, Financial Crime, and Compliance . The article examines how criminal networks, smugglers, businesses and corrupt officials adapted to Bulgaria’s EU integration. It illustrates how corruption behaves like an adaptive ecosystem: when regulations and border control technologies change, corruption changes with them. A border built for opportunity – legal and illegal Border spaces concentrate discretionary power in the hands of customs officers, border guards, inspectors and regulators, while bringing together also traders, transport companies, migrants, smugglers, criminal groups and political actors. Kapitan Andreevo is a particularly instructive case due to its strategic location, with thousands of trucks, travellers and goods passing through the border checkpoint daily. Before Bulgaria’s EU accession, corruption at the checkpoint was already deeply embedded. The 1990s brought economic crisis, shortages of consumer goods, weak state capacity and rapidly expanding informal markets. Smuggling became a profitable survival strategy. Border officials could be bribed to overlook undeclared goods, counterfeit products and tax evasion. Duty-free shops in the "no man's land" between Bulgaria and Türkiye became hubs for smuggling cigarettes, alcohol and petroleum products. Corruption operated at multiple levels: everyday exchanges between traders, drivers and officials, often based on long-standing personal relationships, at the lower level connections between politicians, senior civil servants, business elites and organised crime at the higher level. Smuggling routes required political protection. Profits flowed upward through patronage systems. EU accession changed the rules of the game Bulgaria’s EU accession radically transformed the legal and institutional environment. The country had to align its customs regulations, VAT rules, excise tax systems, phytosanitary standards and border procedures with EU standards – a gradual process requiring significant investment. The reforms affected almost every aspect of border governance. Customs procedures became increasingly digitalised. New systems such as the VAT Information Exchange System VIES and the Excise Movement and Control System EMCS improved cross-border monitoring. Phytosanitary and veterinary inspections became stricter. Migration controls tightened through alignment with Schengen rules and access to systems like the Schengen Information System SIS and international databases of stolen documents and vehicles. Meanwhile, new border control technologies – X-ray machines, scanners, thermal cameras and risk-analysis tools – expanded the state’s capacity to detect illicit activity. From a policy perspective, this appeared to be a modernisation success story. But criminal systems rarely remain static when the environment changes. Corruption did not decline – it adapted The most striking finding is that stronger controls often increase the strategic value of corruption. After EU accession, crossing the border illegally became more difficult, risky and expensive. Corruption became necessary not only to speed up procedures but to bypass sophisticated control and regulatory systems. In other words, modernisation transformed the function of corruption: Criminal actors began targeting specialised procedures, such as food safety inspections, VAT systems, automated license plate recognition, laboratory testing and digital customs controls. VAT fraud and the manipulation of digital systems VAT fraud illustrates this adaptation clearly. Within the EU, exports are often subject to a VAT rate of 0 zero percent, which means companies can reclaim any VAT they have already paid domestically. Criminal actors exploited this through "carousel fraud" schemes involving fictitious transactions chains. At Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint, for example, corruption allegedly enabled traders to manipulate customs procedures. One method involved corrupt officials manually entering fake truck registrations into customs systems to simulate border crossings, enabling fraudulent VAT refunds for exports that never occurred. Even more revealing was the manipulation of automated license plate recognition: corrupt actors reportedly disabled automated recognition and manually entered altered plates using Cyrillic characters resembling Latin letters, allowing smugglers to bypass alerts and inspections. This illustrates a pattern seen in many modern corruption systems: digitalisation does not automatically eliminate corruption. Instead, corruption turns towards the technological systems themselves. Food safety, privatisation and rent-seeking EU food safety and phytosanitary regulations created new bottlenecks and forms of discretionary authority. The research describes two recurring manipulation strategies: selective sampling during inspections, where officials took samples only from "clean" sections of shipments; and falsification of laboratory tests to certify unsafe products as compliant. These risks increased after some border functions were outsourced to private companies. At Kapitan Andreevo, food testing, parking operations and vehicle disinfection were privatised. This reform, intended to increase efficiency, allegedly created new opportunities for rent extraction. The controversy surrounding Eurolab 2011, which reportedly obtained monopolistic control over food safety testing under questionable legal arrangements became emblematic of these tensions. The broader implication: privatisation of public functions does not necessarily reduce corruption risks. It can shift them into hybrid public-private arrangements where accountability is weaker and oversight is more fragmented. The rise of “routinised” corruption The study highlights the increased organisation of corruption itself. Today, no single official can independently guarantee a smuggling route. Procedures involve multiple agencies, overlapping inspections and layered oversight. As a result, corruption evolved towards collective coordination. Customs officers, border guards, supervisors, intermediaries and sometimes political actors participate in networks where bribes are pooled and redistributed. These schemes resemble coordinated organisational systems with revenue-sharing mechanisms, internal hierarchies and protection structures rather than isolated rogue actors. This reflects an important conceptual change: border corruption can function as an embedded institutional ecosystem sustained through cooperation, mutual dependence and political protection. Drug trafficking: when corruption becomes too risky Interestingly, corruption is not always the preferred strategy. In drug trafficking, for example, the risks are dramatically higher. Border officials caught facilitating drug trafficking could face severe criminal penalties, including organised crime charges and lengthy prison sentences. As a result, traffickers increasingly invest in sophisticated concealment methods. One example is the "twin trucks" strategy: several nearly identical trucks carrying similar cargo cross the border simultaneously during heavy traffic, with only one of them containing drugs. Since inspection capacity is limited, the probability is high that the "clean" trucks are checked while the drug shipment passes undetected. This shows that corruption and criminality do not always go hand in hand. Sometimes, stronger anti-corruption measures push criminals towards deception and concealment rather than bribery. The bigger lesson: criminal systems are adaptive The case study of the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing is not just about Bulgaria. Policymakers often assume that more technology, controls and regulation will automatically reduce corruption and illicit trade. But criminal systems and corruption adapt. Informal networks reorganise around the vulnerabilities created by reforms. Every regulatory innovation creates new incentives, bottlenecks and opportunities for exploitation. This does not mean reforms are useless. Many EU measures have clearly strengthened border management. However, reforms must be designed with an understanding of adaptive behaviour. Otherwise, states risk producing unintended consequences: stronger incentives for bribery, use of alternative trafficking routes, technological manipulation, new forms of collusion or opaque privatisation structures. I and my co-authors argue for a more integrated approach that combines anti-corruption and anti-crime strategies. We also emphasise the importance of anticipatory governance and foresight-oriented policymaking that try to predict how illicit actors will respond to institutional changes before reforms are implemented. This may be the most important lesson from Kapitan Andreevo. Borders are not static lines defended by static institutions against static threats. They are evolving ecosystems where states, markets, technologies and criminal actors constantly adapt to one another. Learn more Access the full article, “The Evolution of Corruption and Crimes at Kapitan Andreevo Border Checkpoint: The Impact of EU Accession”. Read our Quick Guide 38 to border corruption for a short introduction. Read our Working Paper 58, “Corruption as a facilitator of drug trafficking in the port of Rotterdam” for a related analysis.

Cutting corruption in public procurement in Bulgaria: legal reforms and multi-agency training

Corruption and fraud risks in public procurement are a concern all over the world – including Bulgaria, where scandals around infrastructure and procurement projects damage trust in government, drain the public budget and may also affect EU development funds. The good news is that Bulgaria is taking steps to address these risks. On the prevention side, this includes important reforms to its procurement legislation in 2023 that will help it comply with EU legislative requirements and commitments under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan as well as to prepare for future OECD membership. The Public Procurement Act provides for the establishment of an expert advisory council to the Minister of Finance, which will analyse implementation of the law and issue guidelines to harmonise audit controls. The Basel Institute has been asked to provide assistance in establishing the council and advising its members. On the enforcement side, the country is also working hard to strengthen the capacity of law enforcement agencies to detect, investigate and prosecute corruption in infrastructure projects and procurement and to recover stolen funds. In support of these efforts, the Training Team of our International Centre for Asset Recovery ICAR led a specialised training programme on Corruption in Infrastructure Projects and Procurement in the Bulgarian capital Sofia last week. Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC under the Swiss-Bulgarian Cooperation Programme, the five-day workshop brought together 23 participants including investigators, prosecutors and judges as well as representatives from state anti-corruption, public procurement and auditing agencies. Half of the participants were women. Red flags and recovered assets The training workshop centred on a simulated investigation into the fictitious Deputy Director of the Road Infrastructure Agency. The participants worked in task force groups to identify red flags and unravel the complex schemes used by the favoured contractor to manipulate public tenders. They revealed the clever methods that the Deputy Director used to secure bribes and kickbacks and collected evidence to prove the corruption and money laundering offences in court. The recovery of stolen assets laundered domestically in Bulgaria as well as in the European Union and globally was a significant focus. Participants commented on the professionalism of the trainers, Phyllis Atkinson and Tom Walugembe, with one highlighting the value of “learning directly from individuals who have been involved in major cases in the past”. They also emphasised the balance between theory and practice and the “engagement of the participants with a specific case”, followed by presentations by each group on different aspects of the investigation and asset recovery process covered during the week. Enhancing enforcement capacity The workshop took place at the National Institute of Justice, whose mission is to develop knowledge, skills and competencies in Bulgaria's judicial system and thus promote the rule of law. Opening the workshop, Emil Dechev, Deputy Minister of Justice, pointed out that the training was a natural continuation of earlier training under a partnership between the Basel Institute and the Bulgarian Government. He emphasised the importance of enhancing capacity to investigate corruption and money laundering in this area, as the biggest losses for the Bulgarian national budget lay in public procurement. If Bulgaria could stem the outflow of money, he said, it would be able build roads and other critical infrastructure and allow Bulgarians to live more comfortably. The workshop was closed by Thomas Stauffer, Head of the Swiss Contribution Office in Bulgaria, who emphasised the importance of the training for the success of the country’s national agenda. He stated that procurement was one of the most important and visible fields in which corruption was experienced, where private interests were served at the expense of all.

The Evolution of Corruption and Crimes at Kapitan Andreevo Border Checkpoint: The Impact of EU Accession

Corruption and anti-corruption narratives in Bulgarian media: Media monitoring and analysis report