The Bulgarian Parliament will discuss at first reading the law on preventing corruption among high-level public officials on Friday. Plenary chamber of Bulgaria’s National Assembly. Photo: BGNES The legislation has to guarantee that the fight against corruption will be conducted in a new way and through a new body.The new law is a step foreseen […]

A banking scandal is set to bankrupt Europe’s poorest country   When Alina, a Moldovan student, had her bank card rejected by a cash machine last week, her first thought was to wonder whether the bank had quietly gone under. Happily, the cause was a fleeting technical glitch—but her reaction was not far-fetched. The country’s […]

Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, which was fined a record 3 billion yuan ($483 million) for corruption in China last year and is examining possible staff misconduct elsewhere, faces new allegations of bribery in Romania. GSK confirmed it was looking into the latest claims of improper payments set out in a whistleblower’s email sent to its top management […]

Only around 5 per cent of people in the Western Balkans see the police as an uncorrupt force, research by five civil sector organizations shows. Bojan Elek and Sasa Djordjevic, BCBP researchers | Photo by Beta New research carried out by POINTPULSE, a civil organization network, shows that more than 90 per cent of people […]

A year after a major bank theft was discovered, former governor Ardian Fullani was charged with abuse of office by prosecutors who allege that he bears some responsibility for the crime. Albania’s former central bank chief Fullani behind bars | Photo by LSA. Prosecutors in Albania on Tuesday said they had charged former central bank […]

Watchdog organisation Transparency Serbia told BIRN that the Nenadic case will be a good test of the effectiveness of the recently-adopted legislation protecting whisteblowers. “This case will show how effective the new law is, because we haven’t had such a case since the enactment of the law,” said Bojana Medenica from Transparency Serbia. Nenadic, a […]

Evaluation of local integrity system proved that BiH municipalities lack key mechanisms for the prevention of corruption, and that the liability of local assemblies, governments and political parties is at very low level. Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) held the presentation of the study entitled Local integrity system assessment (LIS assessment) which has […]

Romanian prosecutors have searched dozens of home and offices looking for evidence that drug companies offered doctors vacations and other incentives in exchange for prescribing cancer drugs. A statement from the anti-corruption agency Tuesday (July 28) said that 61 homes and offices were searched in Bucharest and in the northwest Transylvania region. The agency’s chief […]

Bulgaria’s Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva said on Jul 28. that the fight against corruption and the judicial reform represented the two sides of the same coin. Kuneva stated this at a roundtable discussion organised by the Centre for the Study of Democracy, daily Sega reports. According to her, without an effective and independent judicial […]

Croatia’s constitutional court on Monday (July 27) revoked the verdicts that sentenced former ex-premier Sanader to eight and a half years in prison for abuse of office, war profiteering and bribery. The verdicts were overturned because of procedural errors, the court said, and the legal process against Sanader will now restart at Zagreb county court. […]