{"title": "Bulgarians caught in gangland cross fire","content": "<div class='descr'>Bulgarians caught in gangland cross fire -- 50 mob hits, with drugs, sex trade at stakeLike a scene from a Hollywood gangster film, six mobstersin police uniforms burst into Sofia's Slavia restaurant screaming 'Everybodydown!' and opened fire. Within seconds, their target, underworld boss Milcho Bone -- a.k.a. BrotherMile -- and five of his bodyguards lay dead on the restaurant patio. The gangland slaying on July 30 in this small Balkan nation was the latestbloody salvo in an organized crime turf war that has seen 50 mob hits in thepast three years. 'It's at the point that if you go into a restaurant or a bar, you can't besure someone won't come in and start shooting,' says Rumyana Buchvarova,director of Market Links Research firm, based in Sofia. 'That theperpetrators of this recent attack were dressed as police officers isemblematic of the problem we're facing.' Authorities have arrested seven people and charged one man with murder forthe restaurant mob massacre, but police often have a tough time getting suchcharges to stick. Witnesses often recant testimony or fall victim to'accidents,' lawyers back out of cases, and evidence disappears at the handsof corrupt police officials. Criminal gangs in Romania and Bulgaria are 'extremely dynamic' and involvedin 'a wide range of criminal activities which impact upon many EuropeanUnion countries,'' according to a report by Europol, the organization thatcoordinates cross-border policing and criminal investigation throughoutEurope. It suggested that the gangs 'pose one of the main threats to theEuropean Union.' Authorities estimate that international sex trade operatives traffic 10, 000women a year from Bulgaria to other countries. Bulgarian mobsters are adeptat counterfeiting currencies, forging credit cards and identity documentsand facilitating the transit of heroin from Asia to Western Europe,according to Europol. Their criminal enterprises account for between 30 percent and 36 percent ofthe Bulgarian economy -- to the tune of $6.2 billion to $7.4 billionannually, according to the Center for the Study of Democracy in Sofia, thecapital. Bulgaria's mob blossomed after the fall of the Soviet Union. Many out-of-work body builders turned themselves into bodyguards, learned how to shootand joined forces with shady young businessmen looking to exploit Bulgaria'stransition from a closed, Soviet-style system to a more capitalist marketeconomy. Known as mutra -- which means 'ugly face' in Bulgarian -- the bodyguardsmade a name for themselves in the early 1990s by providing 'security' tosmall- and medium-size businesses for monthly fees. Business owners whorefused to pay fell victim to repeated robberies, which ceased only when theprotection money was paid. Homegrown versions of Mafia dons exploited Bulgaria's domestic instabilityand lax law enforcement as the Soviet bloc unraveled, buying or shootingtheir way out of any potential legal trouble. Bulgaria's geographical location at the crossroads between Europe and Asiaattracted mob interests from places as diverse as Russia, China and Colombia -- newcomers who introduced the aspiring Bulgarian capos to more profitablemarkets. Over the past couple of years, authorities striving to clean up Bulgaria'simage before it joins the European Union in 2007 drafted anti-crimelegislation and closed legal loopholes that impeded a crackdown on thecountry's mobsters. A recently passed law targets human traffickingoffenses, mandating 5- t0 25-year jail terms and stiff fines. The result is stiffer competition for the multibillion-dollar drug and fleshtrade, disintegrating into a bloodbath between men whose nicknames couldhave come out of a Dick Tracy comic strip. Authorities believe the two main rivals are drug lord Anton Miltenov, a.k.a. 'The Beak,' and Ilyan Versanov. The fight between them intensified asother criminal groups, including those led by 'Zladko the Baretta' andVassil 'The Scalp' Boshkov, vied for control of the lucrative business ofKonstantin Dimitrov, killed in Amsterdam by a 37-year-old Dutch drug dealerknown as Erwin W., who is suspected of being a hit man hired by someone inBulgaria. On June 4, two men dressed in the flowing black robes of Orthodox priestswalked up to a cafe in Sofia and opened fire, killing three of Miltenov'srivals. In mid-June, the younger brother of 'The Beak' was gunned downoutside a pizza parlor later identified by authorities as a narcoticsdistribution point. 'They have learned all their lessons from Hollywood, and so they play outtheir lives -- and deaths -- in that vein,' says Interior Ministry ChiefSecretary Boyko Borisov, 45, who insists that Bulgaria's mob problems are noworse than those of Italy and the United States. 'If this problem were enough to prohibit entry into the European Union, thenall the countries would have to leave it,' Borisov said. 'Organized crime isan international problem.' Borisov, interviewed between incessant calls on his cell phones in an officecluttered with bulletproof vests, 9mm pistols and handcuffs, doesn't mincewords about the government's strategy. 'We've got a policy of no tolerance. And this is a job that has to be done,and done completely,' he said. Among Bulgaria's successes, security forces dismantled 32 currency- forgingoperations in the past year, snagging millions of counterfeit dollars andeuros. In early June, a four-city sweep involving 360 Bulgarian securitypersonnel and members of Interpol resulted in 10 arrests and the seizure of55, 000 counterfeit euros (about $68,000), as well as forged American andCanadian visas. 'No doubt, efforts are being made,' says Buchvarova of Market LinksResearch, 'but when most of the cases brought against mobsters won't stick,basically there is nothing we can do but wait for them to kill each other.'</div>"}