Bulgaria's Top Cop Regrets Compromising His Party's Presidential Runner

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov has admitted that his recent revelation was a mistake. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's Minister of Interior Tsvetan Tsvetanov has once again admitted he feels remorse over involving his ruling GERB party's presidential runner Rosen Plevneliev in an extortion scandal.

"I made a mistake by giving the Plevneliev case as an example, but I wanted to show how things were going on in the Sofia municipality back in 2007 and how they changed after 2007, when GERB took over," Tsvetanov, who is also the centrist-right party's election campaign head, said Wednesday, as cited by the Dnevnik daily.

The scandal was provoked by a recent unexpected statement on behalf of GERB's vice-chair Tsvetanov that back in 2007 Plevneliev turned down a bribery attempt at Sofia Municpality, but failed to report it to authorities.

According to Tsvetanov, in 2007, Plevneliev told him that three municipal councilmen from the Sofia City Hall, known as the "municipal brokers," 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.

Tsvetanov's revelation was followed by claims on behalf of oppositional politicians that the three municipal councilmen in question are in fact current GERB members.

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