Secret Services Were the Last Bastion of Bulgaria’s Ethnic Party and the Prime Minister Was Not Touching Them Mind the horns!

Vladimira Yaneva, at the time boss of the largest and most important Court in Bulgaria, who signed over 15,000 permits for the use of Special Surveillance Devices (SSD) in the course of just three years at the request of the secret services, including to spy on embassies, is adamant: “The secret services belong to DPS (the Movement for Rights and Freedoms – the party largely representing the Turkish minority in Bulgaria – editor’s note).”

Rumyana Chenalova prompts her that these services are the last bastion of the party. Yaneva continues with her analysis by sharing that if one “touches” the services, they should also jump on DPS and this is why “Boyko (presumably Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov –editor’s note) said “I will not touch them”.

Thus, the two judges actually confirmed the words of right-wing politician Gen Atanas Atanasov from February 4 this year that the services were used for “political favors to DPS” and “the influence of DPS in the services is intact”. On February 14, Atanasov, who is former chief of the National Security Services (NSS), added that the Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry and the Director of DANS were the people used by DPS to usurp the security services.

“The Prime Minister knows this, but in the difficult economic situation in the country and the recent political crisis, he is seeking to strengthen the State and does not want open new fronts. He fears that this will shake the fragile coalition,” is how Gen Atanasov justified Borisov’s position.

The conversation between Vladimira Yaneva and Rumyana Chenalova took place on February 19. The Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry, Svetlozar Lazarov, and the Director of DANS, Vladimir Pisanchev, resigned on March 6 after the interior Minister, himself, threw his resignation.

This Monday, Prosecutor General, Sotir Tsatsarov, offered the insight that the scenario “Yaneva Gate” was been directed from Sofia, referring implicitly to the right-wing party Democrats for Strong Bulgarian (DSB) and its leader Radan Kanev. The new recording confirms this “bold” thesis, but focuses the doubts on the Chair of the Parliamentary Internal Committee Atanas Atanasov, who should be directly questioned as a “script writer” and whose immunity should be lifted. The fact that Yaneva and Chenalova in February shared, repeated and confirmed Atansov’s statements on the influence of DPS in power structures may lead at least to the relevant conclusion that the protagonists in the recordings and the DSB MP were of the same opinion.

This hypothesis also explains the fierce public and official attack launched by DSB against Bivol two weeks ago. Our media and our team were accused precisely by this political party of conducting a “hybrid war”, deliberately aiming to destabilize the country through the disclosure and publication of #Yaneva Gate. This absurd and ridiculous accusation against our media was manically interconnected in the yellow press – one media of Delyan Peevski – with slander stories against Radan Kanev. The apparent replacement of the real problems only achieved to deceive the mass public opinion. We are facing an unprecedented absurdity such as the Prosecutor General, whose name is seriously involved in the disclosed recordings, accusing DSB of plotting a political coup. At the same time, this same DSB is accusing none other than Bivol of a mysterious conspiracy in scheming a coup against the second government Borisov and its regime.

We think that it is unacceptable for a politically independent Prosecutor General to politicize in such populist manner the biggest ever scandal disclosing the backstage corruption in the judiciary. Meanwhile, the political party blamed by him is passing the guilt to a reputed, independent and internationally recognized Bulgarian media, accusing it of “hybrid warfare” and destabilization of the State. This attack was launched only because we dare to do our job professionally and objectively and provide to the public truths and facts about which it has every right to be informed.

We keep wondering what sick mind can come up with such conclusions!? Bivol’s defamation can be only associated with an attempt to water down the severity of the dependencies and corruption in the judicial system in Bulgaria that are internationally notorious and over which our country is subject to monitoring by the European Commission in the chapter “Justice and Home Affairs”. These are dependencies and corruption against which we have been unwaveringly fighting for years.

Certainly, the pre-trial proceedings launched by the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office (whose boss is “Its-o-o-o” from the recordings) must also check all hairdressing salons in Sofia for secret microphones. As for the printouts from Viber, they can wait until the expiration of the 30-month period during which they are kept by the company. It would be also interesting to see if the Courthouse and the Prosecutor’s Office would duly provide to themselves the videotapes from cameras for indoor surveillance and printouts from the phones of the office of the Prosecutor General.