Probe into Stanishev's Wife Under Way - Chief Prosecutor

The PR agency of Monika Stanisheva (R) allegedly received part of the sum which had earluer been trasfered by the government, led by her partner Sergey Stanishev (L), to Austrian Lobbyist Peter Hochegger. File photo

Monika Stanisheva, the partner of socialist leader Sergey Stanishev, is under investigation over the notorious Hochegger affair, Bulgaria's Chief Prosecutor confirmed.

Sotir Tsatsarov told reporters she had already been interrogated by police in relation to a report by the so-called "Hochegger Committee" operating within the previous Parliament.

Though recognizing that the probe into the committee's report (issued in September 2013) was going at quite a slow pace, he argued that handling delays was not among his responsibilities.

In 2012 Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov (from then-ruling center-right party GERB), citing a documents of the Austrian Parliament, claimed that part of the EUR 1.5 M paid by the three-way coalition government to Peter Hochegger, then a controversial lobbyist, had been sent back to the PR agency of Monika Stanisheva.

Originally the money was assigned to Hochegger after his agency had been hired by the cabinet twice, in 2006 and 2008, to boost Bulgaria's image in the European Union.

The three-party government (2005-2009) was headed by Sergey Stanishev, and Monika (nee Yosifova) was not his partner at the time.

In September 2013, Hochegger was sentenced in Vienna to 2.5 years of imprisonment after a court found him guilty of ?betting embezzlement and making false statements in testimony to the anti-corruption committee in the Austrian Parliament.

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