Bulgaria Footballers to Face the Music Again over Tax Frauds

Last summer the revenue agency checked the property and bank deposits of more than 70 top flight football players for suspected tax evasion. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Bulgaria's national revenue agency announced it will continue to investigate local football clubs for possible tax evasion as part of measures to curb rampant fraud and boost budget revenues.

The probe is a follow-up to previous checks of Bulgarian players and top flight clubs that revealed millions of levs of unpaid taxes and social securities. It has been prompted by suspicions of hidden documents and sources of financing, as well as tax evasion.

Tax officials will check the money paid for transfer of footballers, revenues from advertisements, sources of financing, accounting documents, expenses for salaries and medical treatment.

Football players would have to pay back the taxes they owed if audits proved their real and declared incomes did not match.

Bulgaria's center-right government, which swept the elections in the summer of 2009, has launched a number of tax evasion checks as it fears that a failure to meet its promise to fight against graft and powerful organized crime could lead to more sanctions by the European Union.

Last summer the revenue agency checked the property and bank deposits of more than 70 top flight football players for suspected tax evasion.

The garrulous wives of Bulgarian footballers, who are more than happy to talk about the luxurious life they lead, are believed to be the ones, who prompted government officials to investigate the top soccer players.

The tax officials were impressed by the players' wives TV appearances, in which they don't miss to brag about the expensive cars of their husbands and all the possessions they have.

Now the tax officials claim the probe has yielded results – some of the players are already reporting incomes as high as BGN 50,000 per month.

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