Following a two-hour search operation, police took the leader of the biggest opposition party and former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov to the General Directorate National Police and are holding him in custody for 24 hours.
“No charges have been brought and no charges can be brought because by Bulgarian law, charges can only be pressed by written authorization of a prosecutor,” explained lawyer Menko Menkov after meeting with former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. In his words, the grounds for detention are extortion, “though it doesn’t say who has been extorted by Mr. Borissov, when they were extorted, for what or how.”
A large-scale operation of the General Directorate National Police is underway in connection with 120 cases of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bulgaria, the press office of the Ministry of Interior announced. Searches and seizures are being carried out at many locations in Bulgaria.
According to the police, at the moment, besides Boyko Borissov, former Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov and the former head of the government information service Sevdalina Arnaudova have also been detained. Even though initially the Interior Ministry announcement included the name of Menda Stoyanova as being among the persons detained, the former chair of the parliamentary budget committee denied being among the detainees.
“Nobody is above the law!”, Premier Kiril Petkov wrote on Facebook.
Representatives of GERB’s youth organization, MPs and the leadership of GERB party gathered in front of Boyko Borissov’s home and called the operation “political repression”.
“Bulgaria's Prosecutor's Office has not been notified about the investigation of political figures", the Spokeswoman of the Prosecutor General’s Office Siyka Mileva said for bTV. In her words, more information should be sought from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
On Thursday, 17 March, Bulgaria’s Minister of Interior Boyko Rashkov held a working meeting with European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kövesi to discuss Bulgaria’s work on establishing a team of investigators in the Ministry of Interior to cooperate on cases of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Overnight it will be mostly clear. Winds will weaken and die down in many areas. In the morning it will be cold, with minimum temperatures between minus 7 and minus 2°C, reaching minus 10°C in the valleys and around minus 9°C in Sofia. Tomorrow will be..
The planned annual maintenance of Unit 6 of Bulgaria's only NPP, Kozloduy, has been completed. The unit was connected to the national grid at 10:07 following an inspection by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency. In addition to the repairs made to improve..
A quadripartite meeting of the interior ministers of Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria and Romania in Budapest on 22 November made it clear that Austria would lift its veto and that Bulgaria and Romania would probably become full members of Schengen from the..
“It’s time to lift internal border controls now,” European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson believes. In an interview with RFE/RL she..
The Constitutional Court has opened a case following the request by President Rumen Radev for the amendments to the Constitution, endorsed by the 49 th..
Romania and Bulgaria have a chance to join the Schengen area by land as of January 2025 , Hungarian Interior Minister Sándor Pinter said after an..
Mostly Cloudy
Partly cloudy, chance of rain
Partly Cloudy
Partly cloudy, chance of snow