A total of 261 Bulgarian top flight football players are under scrutiny for suspected tax evasion, the national revenue agency announced Tuesday. Most of the players, 97, come from Sofia, the agency added in a statement without disclosing their identity or the clubs they play for.
It said that revenue agents would check whether the players' real estate property, cars and bank accounts were matched by their declared incomes. Discrepancies would prompt them to forward the findings to the prosecution, the agency added. The action is a follow-up to previous checks of both players and top flight clubs that revealed a total of eight million leva (four million euros) of unpaid taxes and social security instalments. Players paid as much as 15,000 leva (7,700 euros) per month had declared they received the minimum salary of 220 leva, the agency found.