On the day Transparency International declared Bulgaria the most corrupt country in the European Union, the Bulgarian sport and football world was shocked to see the arrest of a high-profile sport and government official.

Ivan Lekov, a well-known former football referee and current deputy head of the State Agency for Sports and Youth (SASY) was arrested on September 23 before TV cameras.

The images of men in suits wearing black masks leading Lekov out of his office quickly gripped the world media, as did the BBC documentary Buying the Games in 2005, which showed now former-Bulgarian Olympic committee president Ivan Slavkov discussing the "deal" .

In Lekov's case the deal was allegedly about buying football matches, not the Olympics. And, unlike Slavkov, he was actually arrested and charged with "abuse of position".

The accusation is based on the word of four former football referees who broke their silence on August 25 by telling a news conference that there was match fixing in Bulgaria. The referees, all of whom were banned from the profession by Borislav Alexandrov, head of Bulgarian Football Union's (BFU) referees committee, said that the latter, among other BFU officials, had applied pressure on them to fix match results which they had declined.

The four referees were Momchil Vraikov, Dimitar Dimitrov, Krassimir Yosifov and Hristo Ristoskov. The latter claimed he had the proof: phone and video records with Alexandrov and Lekov. After the scandal took place on August 26 both Alexandrov and Lekov denied the accusations, calling them a set-up.

The first proof of Ristoskov's words, however, came from another respected football official, Valentin Mihov, president of the Professional Football League. He said he had watched the tapes and yes, Lekov and Hristoskov were on it. They had discussed "something about a game that involved Belasitsa football club", whose owner Konstantin Hadjiivanov was recently arrested in Greece after an European arrest warrant was issued against him by a German court.

Following Ristoskov's and Mihov's words the General-Prosecutor's Office summoned for questioning the four referees which resulted in arresting Lekov and launching an investigation against Alexandrov whose bail was set at 5000 leva.

Alexandrov has been accused of applying pressure on referees for years but Lekov's name has never been mentioned in this light so far. Besides being deputy head of SASY with a rank of a deputy minister, he is also deputy head of BFU, which makes him a highly influential sports official.

Following his arrest both SASY and BFU said that the two alleged masterminds of Bulgaria's corrupt football scheme would be dismissed from their offices.

BFU's president Borislav Mihailov went even further by dismissing the entire BFU's referee committee and asked BFU's delegates for a vote of confidence. In order to get it BFU will hold an early congress by the end of the year. "I am tired of being called incompetent all the time" he said hours after Lekov's arrest. Next to that there was going to be no more conflict of interest in BFU's referees' committee, he said, citing the fact that Alexandrov's son is a football referee. As for the football clubs, the alleged source of pressure on referees, they satisfied themselves with adopting a code of ethics that is supposed to end this pressure.