Bulgaria's deputy interior minister resigned on Saturday after allegations linking him with corruption, Reuters reported. Raif Mustafa said he resigned to avoid embarrassing his ethnic Turkish party, Movement for Rights and Freedom (MVF), before a parliamentary election on July 5. The Balkan country's police arrested a businessman on Thursday accused of offering a 100,000 levs ($72,000) bribe to a senior government official. The arrest was part of an investigation into suspected fraud involving European Union aid. Some local media said Mustafa was involved. Mustafa denied any wrongdoing in a statement and said he asked the MVF's leadership to exclude him from the party's list of candidates for the election. Brussels has rapped Bulgaria's Socialist-led government for doing too little to fight powerful organised crime gangs and corruption among the country's top officials. Opinion polls show more than two-thirds of Bulgaria's 7.6 million people want the government to go because of its failure to fight graft and organised crime, and tackle the economic crisis.
