|
 The second day of the international conference on
the Informal Economy in the EU
Accession Countries: Size, Scope and the Trends in Trafficking and
Corruption, organized by the Center for the Study of
Democracy (CSD) on November 29-30, 2002 in Sofia, was dedicated to
the Economy of Crime: Grey Sector, Trafficking,
Corruption.
The event was part of CSD' efforts to assess the development of
trans-border crime and related corruption in Bulgaria. In 2000 the
CSD published the Trafficking
and Corruption: Monitoring and Prevention report which
examined for the first time the processes of illegal trafficking
and the related corruption in Bulgaria, identifying their typical
manifestations and the practical assessment, prevention and control
strategies and methodologies. The report came as result of the
joint efforts of state institutions and non-governmental
organizations within the framework of the anti-corruption
initiative Coalition 2000 and its findings were
presented and evaluated at a number of international
conferences.
 An updated version of the above report has been
developed by the members of the Working Group on Contraband and
Corruption within Coalition 2000 and the analysis Corruption, Trafficking and
Institutional Reform was published in November 2002. It
is dedicated to the trans-border crime in Bulgaria as a part of the
new network of international organized crime and calls for a
determined effort to counter systemic corruption within the
law-enforcing and law-protecting institutions. A further
contribution of CSD in the area has been the monograph Smuggling in Southeast
Europe (November 2002) reviewing the connection between
the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and the growth of the
trans-border crime in the region, and also looking at the related
issue of corruption. 
The conference on the Economy of Crime: Grey
Sector, Trafficking, Corruption aimed at assessing the new
developments in the institutional response to the grey economy and
transnational crime with a particular focus on the threats from the
flourishing of the economic crime in Bulgaria during the years of
transition as a consequence of a number of national and
international factors.
 Among the latter are international terrorism, the
expansion of cross-border organized crime, new dimensions of the
international corruption in the context of the globalization of the
economy, the destabilizing processes in the Western Balkans and the
imposition of embargo regimes, the appearance of regional
contraband channels and others. The national factors such as the
crisis of the reforming judicial system and the destabilization of
the law-enforcement agencies, also created an unfavorable legal and
institutional environment for the developing business sector and
made the differentiation between the public and the private sphere
problematic.
The Minister of Interior of Bulgaria, Mr. Georgi
Petkanov, opened the conference. Keynote speakers were Mr. James
Pardew, US Ambassador, and Mr. Ian Soutar, UK Ambassador.
Representatives of government and law enforcement agencies, the
judiciary and experts from the non-governmental sector dwelled on
the economic price of the organized crime and corruption. The
participants in the conference agreed on the fact that the
organized crime was not just a criminal issue but a problem of the
socio-economic and political development of Bulgaria and that there
is a need to improve the communication and cooperation between the
government, the law enforcement, the law protection institutions
and the non-governmental organizations to counteracting the
organized crime.
See also:
Conference agenda and
speeches
Full transcript of
presentations (in Bulgarian only)
The Economy of
Crime - Discussion Topics (PDF)
Media coverage
Photos
Related events and publications of CSD
Main page of the conference
| 
