A new business niche emerged in Bulgaria after the country’s government decided to build fence along the entire border with Turkey, in order to curb the flow of illegal immigrants. In fact, this is the old and popular criminal business with fake documents. Bulgaria is situated on the shortest route to Europe and those who wish to escape from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to Europe usually cross the country. If one possesses a fake passport, he would find it easier to reach his goal and final destination.

This week the Bulgarian authorities intercepted international channel for transfer of refugees abroad through forged documents-fake IDs, passports, driving licenses and even fake money. According to preliminary information, the order was made in Turkey and is to the tune of over USD 50,000.The authorities found during the search a total of 10,000 specimens for the manufacture of fake foreign documents. The intermediary was an owner of an illegal printing house which did part of the criminal act. The authorities seized 1,500 pages with high-quality water stamps and seals of foreign countries enough to make 3,000 passports. The detained criminal group has been engaged with similar activities in Bulgaria for a long time now. The new “business” for export of refugees abroad is very popular and lucrative. According to the current Interior Ministry Chief Secretary Svetlozar Lazarov, this business poses a risk over the national and the EU security.

Recently Brussels has been concerned with another legal form of residence on European territory- the purchase of European citizenship. It stems from Malta’s decision to sell citizenship to foreigners for EUR 650,000 per passport. According to data of EU Observer, over 200 people of 30 different nationalities have already applied to receive documents under this scheme. Most of them are Russian and Chinese nationals and ones from the Middle East region. They would bring some EUR 200 million to the budget of Malta, but will also pose risks over Europe’s security, too. The applicants have to reside in Malta for at least 12 consecutive months, in order to receive such documents, i.e, Malta will have its first new citizens in the spring of 2015. These people will have equal rights to all other EU citizens. They will be able to purchase documents to their children, husbands, wives and parents and will be eligible to live and work in all other 28 EU member states, to travel without visas to 69 other counties, including the USA. This is so, because the current European legislation does not prohibit trade with citizenship.