Maya Manolova from the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) has said that she simply fulfilled her civic duty when she submitted the tip-off about the 350 000 illegal ballots to the prosecuting authority.

Speaking Wednesday at an extraordinary press conference, Manolova commented on the scandal with the illegally printed ballots discovered just hours before the start of the May 12 parliamentary elections at a printing facility in Kostinbrod.

Manolova, as cited by the BGNES news agency, made clear that she had been informed about the fraud scheme by sources close to the Kostinbroad-based printing house.

She said that she had been wondering how former Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov had learned on May 12 that it had been her who had submitted the signal until she found out that Tsvetanov had been informed about the author of the tip-off by the State Agency for National Security (DANS).

"Yes, it was ne who submitted he tip-off and I am saying this today, and I said it on May 12 too," Manolova stated, adding that she had simply fulfilled her duty as a citizen, legal expert and politician.

"I do not understand this hysteria surrounding the submission of the signal. It is as if I knew that a bank robbery was being prepared, I submitted a signal and after that the robber blamed me for not becoming a millionaire," she declared.

"I shall not argue with Boyko Borisov if he believes that these extra printed ballots would have brought him an extra 5-6% of the votes, he is obviously right. However, it remains unclear what he won by the extra ballots which were taken out of the printing house before the raid and successfully delivered," she said.

During the press conference, Mihail Mikov from BSP noted that the case with the unaccounted-for 350 000 ballots was a clear breach of the Election Code, adding that under Article 162, para 2 the number of ballots printed for the parliamentary elections had to amount to the number of voters plus 10%.

"This is obviously a violation of the Election Code," Mikov stated.

The 350 000 illegally printed ballots, allegedly, were to be used to manipulate the vote in the early general elections on Sunday, May 12, to turn the results in favor of the centrist Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party, GERB.

The questionable ballots were seized on May 10 from the premises of Multiprint, the company commissioned by the government to print the official election ballots. The company had to print and deliver all ballots to the district administrations by May 8.

Bulgarians went to the polls on May 12 to elect a new Parliament after the center-right government of former GERB Prime Minister Boyko Borisov resigned on February 20 amid nationwide anti-poverty and corruption protests.

The election campaign was accompanied by serious scandal involving alleged unauthorized deployment of special surveillance equipment during Tsvetan Tsvetanov's term in office as Interior Minister.

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