Bulgarian Customs has reduced the number of regional customs houses from 16 to 5, while decentralizing some authority from Sofia to the remaining regional houses. Customs manpower has been reduced from 4,100 to 3,690, and there have been substantial personnel changes with the change in government. The Ministry of Interior's Central Service for Combatting Organized Crime has been upgraded to a national service with regional offices, and its border guard has been changed to a border police. A new section for drug control has been set up in the Criminal Division of the National Police with a regional presence nationwide. The country's priority on counternarcotics law enforcement remained constant.
Corruption is widespread in Bulgaria, including among police and customs officials.
However, the USG has no specific information that senior GOB officials are involved in drug trafficking or other narcotics-related crimes. The new Bulgarian government has made the fight against organized crime and corruption a major part of its program and has launched an extensive reform effort to strengthen anti-crime legislation. In the fall of 1997, a temporary parliamentary commission met for two months to investigate institutional problems in the fight against crime and corruption and to propose executive measures and legislation for their elimination. Bulgaria signed the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in 1997. Agreements and Treaties .