Bulgaria's Interior Parliamentary Committee voted Tuesday to putt off with one day its meeting that had to look at the report by its Chair Mincho Spasov about the Interior Ministry's activities to combat organized crime.
The decision was made with 13 votes in favor vs. 12 votes against. It was supported by the representatives of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (both parties are in the governing coalition), who argued they needed more time to familiarize themselves with the report's conclusions.
The report of MP Mincho Spasov that had been submitted to the Committee members was shown to the media by the leader of the Ataka party Volen Siderov.
The report concludes that the Interior Minister Rumen Petkov's meeting with the Galevi Brothers, who were under investigation, was not statutory. Petkov had argued he had met with the two notorious businessmen in order to receive valuable information but the report finds statutory contradictions.
It also states that there were bothering practices in the Interior Ministry with respect to its activities to combat drugs production and distribution that led to decreased levels of crime detection and leakages of classified information to organized crime.
The reports also discovers "strange contacts" between top officials of the Interior Ministry and persons from the underground world, who are being investigated, many of them for drug trafficking and smuggling.
The Chair of the Interior Parliamentary Committee Mincho Spasov declared he had scheduled a new meeting for Wednesday, when his report criticizing the Interior Ministry is expected to be discussed.