The Economist reports that Petkov resigned following a leaked intelligence report detailing that “a drug gang had received top-secret internal documents from officials in his ministry, while illegal booze producers gave money to a senior crime-fighter in return for information and the destruction of incriminating evidence.”

According to Balkan Insight: “His [Petkov] ministry has been criticised for failing to root out corruption and curb organised crime. The killings of an author of books on the Bulgarian mafia and the chief of an energy company were killed in two separate incidents in Sofia sparking warnings from the European Union about the country's failure to tackle contract killings.”

Reuters reports that Petkov has admitted to being "responsible for some appointments in the ministry through which I misled the leadership of the country."

Following Petkov’s resignation, Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev told the Sofia branch of his Socialist Party: "There must be clear professional and political outlines in the government from now on," reports Balkan Insight.

Stanishev has since “sacked the ministers of defence, agriculture and health, and named a new interior minister to replace Rumen Petkov,” lists the BBC.

On 28 March, European Commission President Jose Barroso condemned Bulgaria for “failing to deal with organized crime and corruption more than a year after it joined the 27-nation bloc” (Bloomberg). Bulgaria stands the risk of facing “sanctions if the European Commission's mid-2008 report on the country's progress in fighting corruption and organised crime is negative,” according to Balkan Insight.

“The EU suspended payments by some agricultural and transportation projects in February after its anti-fraud office found irregularities in distribution. The bloc has earmarked subsidies of 11 billion euros ([US] $17.3 billion) for Bulgaria through 2013” (Bloomberg).