Bulgaria's Chief Secretary of Interior Blames Low, Middle Managers for Failed Operations

Bulgaria's Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry, Kalin Georgiev, has called for relieving senior officials at the Interior from accountability for each and every action of the police. Photo by BGNES

Bulgarian Interior Ministry Chief Secretary Kalin Georgiev , who came under fire for major faults in the work of the police, has said that lower and middle managers are to blame for the current problems at the Interior.

In a Friday interview for the morning broadcast for private TV channel TV7, he admitted that the last two controversial police operations, the violent raid of the home of the Nachkovi family in the village of Mirovyane and the search of the home of a murder suspect, during which he committed suicide, suicide of a murder suspect, had been ill-planned and poorly conducted.

Georgiev nevertheless insisted that the operations had been carried out by professional employees of the Interior and refused to name concrete people who could be held accountable for the mistakes.

Georgiev's comments come one day after Prime Minister Boyko Borisov urged him to take responsibility for the failures rather than Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov.

After a meeting between the two, it was announced late on Thursday that Georgiev will keep his job as Interior Ministry Chief Secretary, despite earlier claims that he had prepared to step down.

"It is high time we stopped fussing about resignations, nominations and appointments. I am Chief Secretary of the Interior," Georgiev said Friday morning.

"The Chief Secretary of the Interior controls all activities at the Interior Ministry, and this is my duty. The Prime Minister spoke about levels of accountability and it was for a reason that he specified that I am the supervisor of 50 000 officials. It is only logical that I cannot exercise direct control over them but I must create the right organization. This is already in place. The problem at the Interior currently is the work of the low and middle managers," Georgiev explained.

He further noted that the Interior Ministry's system was highly centralized, with "intense pressure concentrated at one point".

Georgiev argued that lower-level workers should take more responsibility and account for their actions in public.

"We cannot hold the senior officials accountable for everything," he insisted, adding that in other countries around the world the investigations were the responsibility of the respective operational officers or investigation magistrates.

Georgiev revealed that the Prime Minister had advised him during Thursday's meeting to make more frequent media appearances to explain the actions of the police.

The Chief Secretary of the Interior Minister also warned against a trend for politicizing crimes.

"I oppose the exertion of political pressure for the purpose of deriving profits from tasks of the Interior, be they well-done, or badly-conducted," Georgiev concluded.

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