New Bulgarian Experts Appointed to Investigate Former PM

Two new experts have been appointed to the investigation to establish whether former Bulgarian PM Sergey Stanishev had been involved in violating national security by misplacing DANS reports. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's Prosecutor's office has appointed two new experts from the State Commission on Information Security (DKSI) to complete the investigation into the DANS confidential reports that former PM Stanishev is alleged to have misplaced.

Sofia City Prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov has announced this development on Thursday He explained that the originally designated experts, also from the DKSI, would not produce the report that should determine whether the lost reports of DANS represented a state secret, and whether national security had been violated.

Tsveta Markova, the head of DKSI, had said that both initially appointed experts had justifiable reasons for not completing the task they were appointed to work on.

One of them had left the commission and had begun to work at the Council of Ministers, and the other was on leave of absence because of his wife's poor health.

"I am unpleasantly surprised," Kokinov commented. According to him there was a need to have a service by the Ministry of Justice, where experts from all disciplines would work full-time and be available at any time.

Kokinov said he believed that, in this way, situations similar to this one would not arise, expert assessments would be faster completed, and it would be cheaper for the taxpayer.

The expertise on the proceedings had been appointed some two months ago, with the task of determining whether some documents contained classified information.

On November 3, 2009, Chief Prosecutor Boris Velchev had requested Sergey Stanishev to be stripped of his parliamentary immunity, thereby allowing him to be investigated for allegedly losing documents and materials containing state secret information.

In response to this request, the former Prime Minister had voluntarily waived his parliamentary protection.

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