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Данилово блогче

Sun, 13 Jul 2008

While driving back from GUADEC, I became the victim of corrupted officials on the Bulgarian side of the Turkey/Bulgaria border along the E80 route.

The guy at the border 'accidentally' missed to hand me a USB key (which I am supposed to carry on from one control point to the other, and probably contains all the info already processed), what I found out at the next control point. When I came back to get the USB key, he said some things about how he can't find the image of my car in the computer, and how I should give him a tip of 5 euros for him letting me through (all in Bulgarian, so I could understand him only because Serbian and Bulgarian are somewhat alike). Not wanting to lose any more time at the border (I still had some 6-8h of driving to do), I gave him 10 euros (the smallest bill I had), and got my USB key.

It would not be that bad if I was the only sucker: I've seen a few other people going back for their "chips", and paying money to a guy sitting in a box with a sticker of "No payments are made here". I emailed the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Bulgarian Customs, but I am not sure if that'll be of any use.

I am sort of used to fighting this in Serbia, but didn't expect it in European Union as well. I guess being in the EU doesn't help stop small-scale corruption either (and we all know it doesn't help stopping big-scale corruption, with the grand example of OOXML).

[12:16] | [] | # | G | | TB
It's just as bad in Romania. I've seen the Romanian border guards bribed effortlessly at the Hungarian/Romanian border crossing at Cenad.
— Posted by Murray Cumming at Sun Jul 13 12:59:02 2008
Turkey is not in EU yet. Now they're just inside the screening process that started in 2004 and will end in 2013.
— Posted by Marco at Sun Jul 13 13:43:01 2008
I'm sorry I've made a mistake, forget the above comment
— Posted by Marco at Sun Jul 13 13:52:18 2008
Sorry for your bad experience with the bulgarian customs. I wrote to few newspapers and site about what happen to you with link to your site. I hope they will contact you and investigate the case.

Best regards
— Posted by Nickolay Kolev at Sun Jul 13 14:25:57 2008
Hm, USB key? That's new...
I'm going to Greece in September and might be going through Bulgaria - can you tell me more about this? I understand that at one checkpoint you get that USB key and then pay at another, handling that over?
— Posted by Aleksandar at Mon Jul 14 11:38:05 2008
Nickolay: thanks.

Murray: I've also seen Serbian customs official being bribed for letting some Bulgarian guys through with around 50 bottles of alcohol. My only thing to say is that "at least" this involved a guilty party.

Aleksandar: at the first checkpoint, they handed out USB keys (look just like any other USB key, should have looked at them with my laptop to see if there's anything interesting there :), which I had to carry over from one control point to another (there were a total of 4 or 5). On every control point, they read some data off (check that you've been through previous control points) and write data relevant to that control point (so you are clear on the following one). At the last checkpoint you don't get the USB key back.

Also, I didn't have to go through this when entering Bulgaria from Serbia (on July 6th), only when coming back from Turkey (13th). Maybe they introduced it just that week, or maybe they don't have it everywhere.
— Posted by Danilo at Wed Jul 16 06:18:33 2008
Must be the cultural heritage of Ottoman Empire :)
— Posted by Mert at Tue Apr 28 09:57:31 2009

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