Bulgaria’s interior minister faced calls to resign after WhatsApp messages revealed officials had allegedly turned a blind eye to a €6 million smuggling operation that brought illicit cigarettes through Bulgaria from Turkey and into the European Union.
In smuggling contraband goods and trafficked migrants, “many people forget about the Bulgarian border with Turkey”, Dmytro Tupchiienko, a lawyer and risk consultant specialising in southeastern Europe, told Brussels Signal on April 7.
The “flatlands where the Balkan mountains slope down to the River Danube” were a key location for smugglers bringing “cigarettes, tobacco and drugs” and people from Turkey into the EU, said Tupchiienko. He alleged that organised crime links had corrupted Bulgarian government officials at the highest level to look the other way.
In November 2024, six Bulgarian police officers identified a lorry carrying contraband cigarettes along a known smuggling route into the EU.
Their superiors, though, allegedly told them: “Colleagues, withdraw”, according to screenshots of WhatsApp messages released a few days ago by BOEC, an anti-corruption civil society group in Bulgaria.
When the officers went ahead with the raid nonetheless, the suspects appeared to have received advance notice and tried to flee. The six law enforcers shortly afterwards received “disciplinary punishments”, according to BOEC.
The contraband cigarettes, discovered in Bulgaria’s second-largest city of Plovdiv, were apparently meant for sale in France and the UK.
Interior Minister Daniel Mitov dismissed opposition calls for his resignation, saying: “I will not allow speculation to tarnish the work of the Ministry of Interior or smear the reputations of conscientious officers because of isolated incidents.”
The deputy director of Bulgaria’s border police, Kalin Litov, allegedly telephoned the smugglers directly to warn them and issued the order for the police officers to stand down, according to BOEC.
Mitov told reporters on April 3 that Litov had been dismissed from his post.
A pack of cigarettes that cost €11.50 in Belgium would currently cost €3.38 in Bulgaria and €2 in Turkey. With 24 per cent of Belgium’s population being cigarette smokers, the market for smuggled cigarettes from Bulgaria and Turkey was a lucrative one.
“This type of crime is often underestimated by the public,” Damyan Lechev, director of international co-operation for Bulgaria’s interior ministry, said in November last year.
“The illegal trade in cigarettes is a crime that generates huge financial resources and directly affects the financial system of the countries in the European Union,” he said.
“In most cases, the proceeds are used to finance other types of crimes, including terrorism,” Lechev added.
Belgian media estimated in 2024 that the country was losing €500 million annually in cigarette tax revenues to cigarettes illicitly supplied from abroad. Almost 25.6 per cent of cigarettes on sale in Belgium had been sourced from abroad, chiefly by way of Bulgaria, it was reported.
Bulgarian customs said on X on March 10 they had seized 171,501 smuggled disposable e-cigarettes in Plovdiv in the two years up to March 2025.
In one arrest on April 7, police in Harmanli near Bulgaria’s border with Turkey seized 5,300 smuggled cigarettes, without an excise stamp, as well as 2,300 counterfeit shoes and containers of perfume.
Some 70 per cent of smuggling from Turkey into the EU through Bulgaria goes via Kapitan Andreevo, a Bulgarian village close to its borders with both Turkey and Greece and the world’s second-busiest border crossing after Tijuana.
“Smugglers further up the chain come here to recruit drivers, to take migrants across Bulgaria, from the Turkish border to the Serbian frontier,” said Tupchiienko.
“One should also not forget Bulgarian Pomaks, a religious minority group of Slavic Bulgarians who speak Bulgarian as their mother tongue but whose religion and customs are Islamic,” he said.
The border at Kapitan Andreevo has fallen under the influence of Bulgaria’s powerful organised crime groups, who have collected payment from smugglers and in turn allegedly pay high-ranking Bulgarian officials to allow the smugglers through.
Former finance minister Assen Vassilev estimated Bulgaria has been losing €2,500 an hour in lost customs duties at the Kapitan Andreevo border.
📢#CustomsBG officers at TD Customs Plovdiv seized 5,326 smuggled disposable e-cigarettes💨 on 05.03.2025, raising the 2-year illegal total to 171,501. #Smuggling #BorderControl More: https://t.co/PaV6313Mzu pic.twitter.com/a9Zz4zNxSX
— Агенция “Митници”/National Customs Agency-Bulgaria (@CustomsBulgaria) March 10, 2025
