Bulgaria's PM Borisov during Saturday's press conference where he announced he had been given the secret intelligence report that his predecessor allegedly mishandled. Photo by BGNES
Bulgaria’s former Prime Minister, Sergey Stanishev, may face a sentenced of up to 10 years in prison over mishandling a top secret intelligence report of the State National Security Agency DANS.
“Stanishev must stand up and say whom he gave the report in question. The punishment for such a crime is up to ten years in prison,” said Prime Minister Boyko Borisov on Sunday.
On Saturday, Borisov announced that a day earlier, Aleksei Petrov, former DANS agent, gave him a copy of the original report in question that was submitted to Stanishev, President Parvanov, and former Parliament Chair Georgi Pirinski in October 2008.
The 30-page report includes names of individuals who had destructive influence on the functions of ministries and State administration institutions. According to Borisov, Stanishev took the report with him with the intention to warn people and circles who were mentioned inside as being involved in corruption practices.
On Saturday, the Bulgarian Socialist Party issued a statement refuting the claims that Stanishev mishandled any secret intelligence reports.
“In this case we are talking about personal responsibility. The law is very clear about how this document must be handled. If it was made to be ready by many people, it would not be produced in only five copies,” Borisov said during his Sunday visit to the southwest town of Razlog.
“It is obvious that Sergey Stanishev has committed a grave violation of the Classified Information Act, and must be charged with that,” said Ivan Kostov, leader of the rightist Blue Coalition, and chair of the Parliamentary Committee for Controlling DANS.
“This is a very severe blow against DANS. How come such a document is in the hands of Aleksei Petrov? This shows that the state has been totally shattered by Mr. Stanishev,” Kostov declared in an interview for the BNR.
He reiterated the statements of PM Borisov that Stanishev had created DANS as a political police.
PM Borisov has stated that he had ordered a number of investigations, and that unless the DANS departments start functioning properly within a couple of months, some of them would be returned to the Ministries they used to belong.
DANS was created on January 1, 2008, by the former government of Sergey Stanishev.