Whistleblower Shares Details on Bulgarian Presidential Runner’s Alleged Extortion Case

ane Yane, a controversial conservative MP and leader of the marginal conservative Law, Order and Justice party. Photo by BGNES

Yane Yanev, leader of the conservative Bulgarian Law, Order and Justice party, has claimed he has information about an alleged 2007 extortion case involving the country's top presidential runner, GERB's Rosen Plevneliev.

On Thursday, Yanev, a controversial whistleblower,  commented on the scandal provoked by revelations of Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, head of the GERB election headquarters, who, speaking for journalists last Friday, revealed that Plevneliev had declined reporting an extortion case.

According to Tsvetanov, in 2007, Plevneliev told him that three municipal councilmen from the City Hall, known as the "municipal brokers," have asked him for a bribe of EUR 500 000 to secure his ownership of a small land plot in the Sofia Business Park, one of the top projects of the presidential nomination of the centrist-right  GERB while he was a businessman.

Speaking on Thursday, Yanev mentioned what he claimed were the names of the three so-called "municipal brokers":

"Why don't you have the courage to disclose whether there are police reports on the three municipal councilmen from 2007 – Orlin Ivanov, Radoslav Toshev and Plamen Iliev?," Yanev "rhetorically" asked, referring to the Bulgarian Interior Ministry.

Yanev further wanted to know whether GERB's municipal councilmen Orlin Ivanov, Radoslav Toshev and Danail Kirilov had filed a report about the Business Park deal. In 2007, the three were municipal council members with other parties.

Tsvetan Tsvetanov declared on Thursday that he did not know anything about GERB municipal councilmen being involved in "such schemes."

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