Bulgaria's Ex-PM Was Indeed Interrogated, Officials Say

Bulgaria’s former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov was indeed interrogated by the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office of Cassation, according to officials.

Right after he met with by prosecutors on Tuesday, Borisov insisted that they merely had “a conversation” and that he had not been interrogated.

However, prosecutors have now told the news7 TV channel that Borisov was interrogated in connection with the scandalous recorded conversation that leaked at the end of April.

Borisov also claimed on Tuesday that the prosecutors questioned him because they wanted to investigate the “organized crime group” that secretly recorded a scandalous conversation in Borisov’s own home.

The wiretapping scandal broke out at the end of March, when Sergey Stanishev, leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), submitted a tipoff to Chief Prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov, about illegal wiretapping of politicians, businesspeople and magistrates which had taken place during the rule of Borisov’s center-right GERB party (2009-2013).

At the end of April, a secretly recorded conversation between Borisov, former Agriculture Minister, Miroslav Naydenov, and already-former Sofia City Prosecutor, Nikolay Kokinov, leaked in Bulgarian media, stirring a massive scandal.

The talk in the leaked recording basically revolves around corruption charges pressed against Naydenov and Kokinov being in hot water over breaches he had committed, and ways for both to get out of them.