This March it was the turn of the Bulgarian interior minister, Rumen Petkov, to lose his job, this time under heavy pressure from Brussels.

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So did the interior minister, Rumen Petkov, after reports that a drug gang had obtained secret internal documents from his ministry, and that illegal booze producers had traded money for favours from a senior crime-fighter.

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The Bulgarian government did sack one of its most controversial figures in April: Rumen Petkov, an interior minister known to have had meetings with organised-crime bosses (he insists that he was trying to stop the contract killings).

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