Bulgaria to Fight Drug Trafficking with New Customs Unit

A new unit will be created in the Bulgarian Customs Agency which will aim to cope with the drug trafficking issue, the country's Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov,  has announced.

The new unit will work in close collaboration with the special unit for fighting organized crime in the Bulgarian Interior Ministry, as well as with the US drug fighting authorities.

On Saturday, Borisov gave a special press conference together with Deputy PM and Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, the US Ambassador to Sofia, James Warlick, Foreign Affairs Minister, Nikolay Mladenov, and the Director of the Customs Agency, Vanyo Tanov, in connection with the annual report of the US State Department.

The report, published on Friday, criticized the Customs Agency for the decline in drug seizures."As evidenced by its declining drug seizures, the Customs Agency's institutional capability to combat drugs weakened this year due to structural changes that prioritize countering other contraband over combating narcotics," it said. It further stated that Bulgaria faces several significant challenges in its fight against narcotics trafficking and related crimes.

However, the US Department of State also praised the efforts of the Bulgarian government, and specifically the Interior Ministry, to combat the international drug trafficking.

On Wednesday, it was made clear that Bulgaria was the country which received the second highest heroin shipments in Europe, according to a report by the International Narcotics Control Board's annual report for 2010

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