Misha Glenny could not have chosen a better time to promote the Bulgarian language version of his book, McMafia. A few days before the book launch, Bulgarian society was scandalised by the brutal attack on journalist Ognyan Stefanov, who was almost beaten to death by four masked men. Just two days later, the State Agency for National Security (SANS) - the one given a green light by the Prime Minister to fight organised crime and top level corruption with all legal means possible - was involved in a scandal that suggested that it deliberately had more than 50 Bulgarian journalists and members of Parliament under surveillance, something the agency have denied doing "on purpose".

 As someone who has spent time and money investigating organised criminal networks around the world, Glenny is ready with an answer that should be Bulgarians' response to what has been happening lately.
 
Investigative journalism and Bulgaria
"First of all, Bulgaria has a lot of good investigative journalists. I have read quite a lot of very interesting material, and I have learned a lot by reading some Bulgarian books and newspapers," Glenny said. "For me, what is happening is absolutely outrageous. Why the Bulgarian political class is not standing up and saying `we will not tolerate this', I don't know."

An investigative journalist himself, Glenny is no stranger to what such work demands. "I understand why Bulgarian investigative journalists are restraining themselves, in a way, in the course of their work. I don't think that if I was working here in Bulgaria, I would feel confident of my security as a journalist and this is a very disturbing state of affairs." He did say that he took certain risks in the writing of McMafia, but they were all very carefully calculated ones.

"I admit I had the benefit of being a foreigner; I come in, I come out, which affords me a lot of protection and I realise that." He added, smiling, "Well, it doesn't afford me any protection when I am meeting the FARC in Columbia."

When Glenny was researching in Russia, Vladimir Putin was beginning to reassert the Russian state, which was not the best atmosphere for any journalist.

"I know it is not the same as somebody working here in Bulgaria where your family is, but I really think it is something that Bulgarian society, the Government and the political parties should look square in the face and say `we are not going to tolerate this and we are going to develop a programme to protect journalists, and whoever the political sponsors of this and that newspapers are, we will investigate any attack to our utmost ability on journalists'." For Glenny, the question is not just about the killings and attacks on businessmen and journalists in the past year but a about a period of several years "where dozens of people have been executed publicly and nothing has been done". To him, this speaks about the inability of law enforcement to do its job.

"Now, is that because law enforcement has been incapable, or is it because it has been prevented from doing its job? It is probably a combination of both."

National security
"What worries me about this current situation," he says, "is that it has really strong echoes of what it has been happening in South Africa in the past three or four years, where a directorate of special operations (referred to as "the Scorpions") has been established. Like the Bulgarian SANS, the Scorpions was meant to deal with crime and corruption and "initially it was a really good agency doing the job it was asked to do, and South Africa faces problems with crime that are as great, if not greater, than those faced by Bulgaria," Glenny said.

What happened with the Scorpions was that it became politicised and was used in fights between different factions of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC).

"This is a very disturbing development because it incapacitates good governments and it is very important that this situation is brought under control swiftly, otherwise you run the risk of events developing in Bulgaria as they have developed in South Africa. And the situation in South Africa right now is deadly serious," Glenny said.

"At heart it began with a dispute about the Scorpions, so I would look very closely at that if I was looking at the Bulgarian situation as a way that it might develop."

Pessimism and the EU
Twenty years since the fall of communism the trust Bulgarians have in their political leaders and law enforcement is not exactly brilliant and the high number of unsolved murders and frauds is there to prove it, and Glenny's words support that. "What has been really striking in talking to people in my interviews in Bulgaria is that they say `Well, it's not going to change, so why bother?' I think it is going to change because of the European Union and the way things are done there will shift Bulgarian society."

Again, he is ready with a comparison. "If you look in particular in Ireland Portugal, Greece and Spain over the past 20 to 25 years, huge changes have taken place in those societies. In the Czech Republic things have calmed down, just as they have Slovakia. Poland and Hungary are a bit tricky, but we are looking at a 20- to 25-year period and massive changes and strengthening of the rule of law have taken place there and that will happen in Bulgaria as well," he said with certainty.

"Of course when you are living in Bulgaria now and when you see the influence of this on an every day basis it is very hard to be anything other than sceptical about possible improvement," he said.

He also acknowledged the fact that the UK media often described Bulgaria as a country with serious problems fighting crime. "It is not a brilliant perception and it is a tremendous problem because, once Bulgaria is fingered as the organised crime capital, it is difficult to change it. I always try to say that the situation in Italy is a greater scandal than that in Bulgaria. Italy is a founding member of the EU and we never dare say to Silvio Berlusconi your house is not in order and we should." At the same time, Glenny said, this should not be used as an excuse in Bulgaria for lack of action against crime and corruption.

The excuse of communism
Talking about excuses, Bulgarians have become used to blaming communism on everything that is wrong in their country, but not Glenny. "Bulgaria has moved on to a very different phase since the fall of communism in terms of developing its criminal forces and it is no good to say that organised crime is fine because it was a consequence of the way the transition from communism to democracy took place," he said.

What one has to avoid, according to Glenny, is a kind of fatalism, because that assumes that the society's economic and political system aren't dynamic, yet after 1989, they are dynamic. "If you look at Russia, for example, it's taken a different path than Bulgaria. In the 1990s, organised crime controlled the state, and now in Russia the state controls organised crime. It does make people's lives a little less stressful, but it usually means that the state has far too much power."

In the middle
When talking about crime one usually imagines street crimes, gunshots, robbers and kidnappings. It would not be a lie to say that Bulgaria's streets are relatively safe compared with other major cities around the world, which is not in line with constant statements about the high level of organised crimes in the country.

Partial to giving examples, Glenny is compares the cases of London, Sofia and Johannesburg. "In Johannesburg, one doesn't walk there at night. In London, one can walk there at night, but one may occasionally run into trouble. In Sofia, one can walk there at night and it's absolutely fine." So what is the difference, then?

"In Johannesburg, you have organised crime, but you have a high level of street crime as well. In Sofia, we are talking about elite crime and this is the key difference. In the UK you have a police that has the capacity to keeps both the elite crime and street crime at more or less acceptable levels. Here in Sofia, you have a weakness in police capacity to handle elite crimes, but you don't have a weak police capacity on the streets. In South Africa, the police can't cope with either, so, yes, Bulgaria is somewhere in the middle".

New people
One of the cases Glenny describes in McMafia deals with a young policeman in the Czech Republic who was not trained under communism and was very bright and rose to the top of the anti-organised crime squad. "He was destroyed by a combination of Russian oligarchs and corrupt officials who had worked under communism," Glenny said. "The Czechs have pretty much flushed out a lot of these people from their police services and this is what I mean by political will. You get people who are wedded to the new Bulgaria and not to the old Bulgaria. But that requires active intervention and money."
For Glenny, it is not just about politicians standing up and saying it should stop. "They have to introduce policies and they have to make personnel changes to make it happen." 

Snapshot

The person: Misha Glenny
The job: Journalist
In brief: Misha Glenny is a British journalist who has a long background working in South Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He is considered an expert on the region from the days when was correspondent for The Guardian and the BBC in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the collapse of now-former Yugoslavia and the wars that followed. In 1993, he won Sony's Gold Award for his work, which was followed by the writing of a number of books on South Eastern Europe. The launch of his Bulgarian language book, McMafia, on international organised crime networks with a focus on Bulgaria, was the reason he came to Bulgaria in early October 2008.