Bulgaria's Split Identity

At Sofia's new international airport terminal, new signs welcome visitors to "the EU country, Bulgaria," and the passport control boasts new counters -- one for EU and the other for non-EU citizens.

Outside the terminal, shiny new taxis wait to ferry customers into the city. Next to the meter, a sticker tells people their ride will cost them some two leva per kilometer -- about one euro ($1.33).

Many of the taxis in Sofia's capital are also new, but a ride in one of them costs about 75 percent less than the taxis at the international terminal. This price difference is completely legal, but it does beg the question of why the cheap taxis haven't managed to find their way out to the airport?

The reason can't be because the taxi drivers get lost -- Sofia's roads and freeways are now signposted to European standards.

The mafia?

In the past few years, there have been spectacular headlines about former communist functionaries and secret service officers who managed to privatize -- in their own creative ways -- the state's treasuries and meet the challenges of the market economy with gold-stuffed suitcases in their hands.

According to Dimitar Ludzhev, who was deputy-prime minister in Bulgaria's first non-communist government, the secret service played a key roll in this. Those working in Bulgaria's 300 foreign-based firms gathered intelligence and carried out economic espionage, while the domestic secret service was in charge of the smuggling routes and the illegal transfers of luxury goods.

Many observers say this was the birth of organized crime in Bulgaria. After the fall of communism in 1989, those who had worked for the secret police used their knowledge to stay in business -- but this time in the private "shadow" economy.

No kickbacks?

Bulgaria's border with non-EU member Serbia lies just 60 km (37 miles) away from its capital city Sofia. But there's not much traffic heading out of Bulgaria towards its western neighbor these days along the route which used to be heavily used as part of the highway system running from Turkey over Sofia to Belgrade and Budapest and then to western Europe.

Some trucks and busses are waiting at the Kalotina border crossing, with Turkish, Bulgarian and German plates. Everything seems to be working smoothly and efficiently -- the police and customers officers are friendly and don't mind us observing their work.

There are also new signs on the border: "No payments here, only passport control." This has a clear meaning -- bribery has no place here. Well not any more, as the officers at the border explain with a degree of pride.

But even if kickbacks are no longer expected at Kalotin, it's a different story in other parts of eastern Europe according to one of the bus drivers.

"Well, in Serbia, five euros are expected unless you want to wait two or three hours," he said. "And it's the same in Hungary, that is if you don't want to have your whole luggage searched."

Not the same everywhere

Europe's new eastern border is long and winds from Kalotina south to the Strumica river, where it meets the Greek and Macedonian borders. Here, just near the border lies Blagoevgrad -- earlier a well-known smuggling town and today infamous as the gangster capital of Bulgaria.

Peter Ivanov, 26, from Blagoevgrad's radio station, joked that nowhere else in Europe are there so many limousines as here. His reason for Blagoevgrad's popularity with crime syndicates -- its proximity to three borders.

But Dimitar Ivanov (not related to Peter Ivanov), a businessman, who used to work for Bulgaria's secret service, is adamant that former members of the service have nothing to do with the Bulgarian mafia.

"It's a propaganda theory," Dimitar Ivanov said. "It's propaganda from the right."

His former colleague in the secrete service Zvetko Zvetkov, however, would beg to differ.

"You could very well establish a link (between the mafia) and the former secret service and the former regime," Zvetkov said.

Zvetkov, who in communist times was in charge of spying on the intellectuals, has been trying for years to shed light on the links between the Bulgarian secret service and the criminal underworld.