Bulgaria's Prosecution Denies Having Had Access to Discrediting Tapes

Domestic | January 28, 2011, Friday // 12:08|  views

The allegedly tapped phone conversations between Bulgarian high-rank officials have not been available to the Prosecutor's Office before their publishing int he media. Photo by www.sxc.hu

Bulgaria's Prosecutor's Office has denied having had any of the recently published phone conversations between high-rank officials, tapped through special surveillance devices.

“Bulgaria's Prosecutor's Office states that none of the phone conversations circulating in society have been presented to the supervising prosecutor or any other employee of the Prosecutor's Office, as the media said,” the official statement read.

It was announced Friday to the subcommittee for control over special surveillance devices in connection to statements that the supervising prosecutor Plamen Georgiev had received transcripts of the conversations.

The so-called “spy scandal” was triggered by three tapes of discrediting conversations between the Director of the Customs Agency, Vanyo Tanov, and his superiors – Finance Minister Simeon Djankov and Deputy Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov.

The other released tapes of conversations were between Tanov and Bulgaria's PM Boyko Borisov. In one of them, Borisov called Tanov with an order to immediately pull the tax agents out of the factory of the “Ledenika” beer company because its boss, Mihail Mihov, personally complained to the PM.

In the other tapes, Borisov is allegedly heard speaking of the need to restore to work a friend of his at the Sofia airport.

The conversations were stored on USB ports and were revealed by the Bulgarian Galeria weekly, a paper believed to be the mouthpiece of Alexei Petrov, former special agent of the State National Security Agency DANS (currently under house arrest), who has been investigated on organized crime charges since his detention in the much advertised "Operation Octopus" in February 2010.

On Thursday, the Chair of the subcommittee for control over special surveillance devices, Yavor Notev, said that the supervising prosecutor, Plamen Georgiev, neither confirmed, not denied the authenticity of the tapes.

Tsvetelin Yovchev, Head of the Bulgaria's State National Security Agency DANS, has stated that the allegedly tapped phone conversations are manipulated. In his words, those who hope that the recorded conversations are real are up for an unpleasant surprise.

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Tags: Alexei Petrov, Galeria, Tsvetelin Yovchev, DANS, Vladislav Goranov, Simeon Djankov, Vanyo Tanov, Boyko Borisov, conversations, tapped, tapes, Prosecutor's Office, special surveillance devices

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