Soccer club president murdered in Bulgaria

A soccer club president was shot dead on Monday by a gunman, police said. This is the third time when president of the club is murdered.

The assailant killed Alexander Tasev, 45, with two shots in his car in Sofia's upmarket Boyana neighborhood, a police spokesman said.

Police provided no further details, citing that an investigation had begun.

Tasev chaired the premier division team of Lokomotiv Plovdiv.

He is the third president of this club to be shot dead. His predecessor, Georgi Iliev, was murdered by a sniper in a Black Sea resort two years ago. A few months earlier, another president of the club, Nikolai Popov, was killed in Sofia.

The latest mafia-style murder comes just days after Dimitar Yankov, the head of the city council in the resort town of Nessebar and a major hotel owner in the nearby resort of Sunny Beach, was also shot dead.

The European Union, which Bulgaria joined in January, has warned the country to curb organized crime and overhaul its ineffective criminal justice system.