Who was Tasev. Apart form soccer, Tasev was also known as “the king of cherries”, since he controlled the business of the export of this fruit. But, with his holdings in 240 companies, the manager of Lokomotiv Plovdiv was a businessman involved in many different fields from the food industry to retail sales, from the fuel sales to night clubs. He was often see in company of the former king and former Prime Minister Simeon of Saxe-Coburg, and of other important figures in his centre party. But in Sofia there are also rumours about his cozy relationships with drug dealers.

Whether his activities were legal or not, substantially, many people could have wanted his death. The Ministry of Interior Affairs, who investigated on Tasev in 2001 and later didn't say why the inquiry was interrupted, stated that investigations revolve around different hypothesis. Since none has been accused of any of the 150 commission killings occurred in the last ten years, few expect a swift resolution of the case. “I guess we'll never know who killed him and most important who paid for him to be shot dead. I just wonder what excuse the police will come up with this time”, wrote Lora Petrova, a journalist of the Sofia News Agency.

Second murder in one week. Only last week, in the city of Burgas, on the Black Sea, Dimitar Yankov has been murdered. He was the chairman of the municipal council of a nearby Nesebar and also the owner of many hotels on the Sunny Beach coast, a growing business upon which mafia has put its hands during the last years. Right in Sunny Beach, on September 2005 Tasev predecessor at Lokomotiv, Georgi Iliev was killed while celebrating after the team qualifying for Uefa Cup.

Risky intrigues. “This country is in the hand of speculators who made money in a suspicious way in the 90s, during the transition from communism”, says to PeaceReporter an official of the Center for the Study of Democracy (Csd) in Sofia, a monitoring group financed by the European Union that prefers remaining anonymous. “The most important businessmen work in many sectors, going from legal to illegal activities. Banks, insurances, building companies, touristy trade but also fuel and cigarettes smuggling, prostitution, buying and selling of weapon: none has his hand completely clean. And in order to get public approval, many of these businessmen are chairmen of soccer teams” explains the official.

Waiting for the Eu report. This collusion between business, politics and crime has been the main obstacle to the admission of Bulgaria in the European Union; it took place last January, even though in Brussels many people were diffident. Despite the admission, for Sofia the period of observation has not finished yet: at the end of June the European Union will issue a report about the results achieved by the government in breaking these risky intrigues. The government, led by the socialist Sergei Stanishev, has been at the core of an enquiry for corruption during the last weeks. A scathing report could lead to the freezing of million of euros in aids, and the Bulgarian courts could be quarantined from the rest of the bloc.