Prime Minister Accepts Resignation of State Agency for National Security Chairman Yovchev

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko
Borissov told a news conference here on Thursday that he had
accepted the resignation of State Agency for National Security
(SANS) Tsvetlin Yovchev.

"I hate to see this resignation tendered, but then Mr Yovchev
has the feeling of a personal blame for a gross blunder that has
been made," Borissov said. He told the SANS Chairman that he
continues to regard him as an exceedingly good professional as a
man, expert, policeman, SANS agent and specialist. "To be also
a chief, however, you need some more accomplishments: to be able
to control your subordinates," the PM said.

Yovchev resigned on Wednesday after Borissov told bTV he was
dissatisfied with the way the Agency handled a scandal over
leaked wiretapped conversations of National Customs Agency
Director Vanyo Tanov with the Prime Minister, Finance Minister
Simeon Djankov, Deputy Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov,
Tanov's ex-deputy Antoni Strandjev and two ranking GERB MPs,
showing the power-holders as interfering with the work of
Customs and lobbying for appointments. The calls turned out to
have been monitored as part of Tanov's court-warranted
surveillance over suspicion of involvement in smuggling.

Prosecutor General Boris Velchev described Yovchev's resignation
as "an act of old-fashioned integrity". Velchev told reporters
that Yovchev is a man of dignity and his resignation is
absolutely unrelated to the investigation into the leak of the
wiretaps.

"Prime Minister Borissov has been misled to accuse Tsvetlin
Yovchev of unprofessionalism so as to shift onto him the entire
blame for the wiretapping scandal," right-wing Democrats for
Strong Bulgaria leader and former prime minister Ivan Kostov
told journalists in Parliament. He declined to comment on who
stands behind that action.

Kostov said he will ask the National Assembly SANS Control
Committee, of which he is a member, to summon Borissov and
familarize him with its inquiry and findings about the Agency's
role in the case of the wiretaps and to propose to him to reject
Yovchev's resignation. "The Committee has given the SANS
Chairman a hearing at two meetings and is clear about the
circumstances and, therefore, it believes that Yovchev is not to
blame," Kostov noted. "It was the prosecutor who decided which
officers would be engaged with the wiretapping of Vanyo Tanov
and his deputy Antoni Srandjev," he argued. The officer who
wiretapped Tanov's deputy was neither his employee nor his
friend. The same applied to the Customs Agency Director himself.

"The [February 10, 2011] bombing attack of the editorial offices
of the 'Galeria' weekly is not an act of international
terrorism and, therefore, the Agency cannot possibly investigate
it without violating the SANS Act," Kostov observed.
"Therefore, the PM has been misled and those who did it should
be held responsible.

"I continue to share the position of the Committee that during
the more than a year and a half since Tsvetlin Yovchev has
chaired SANS, the Agency has been working professionally,"
Committee member Kamen Kostadinov MP of the opposition centrist
Movement for Rights and Freedoms told BTA. He noted that Yovchev
has managed to safeguard SANS from political interference. "By
his act, Tsvetlin Yovchev is setting standards of European
behaviour which are not exactly typical of these latitudes,"
Kostadinov said.

"Accepting Yovchev's resignation as SANS Chairman would be a
mistake," Roumen Petkov MP of the opposition left-wing Coalition
for Bulgaria and former interior minister told journalists in
Parliament. "Prime Minister Boyko Borissov himself is perfectly
well aware of the atmosphere, mechanisms and working
arrangements of these services, and I believe that this
resignation is unacceptable to him as well," Petkov added.

"A person who knows Tsvetlin Yovchev cannot but have foreseen
his move," the MP noted. He described what is going on as "a
drive to lay the blame at the wrong door". "Everyone are quite
clear that the special surveillance means were initiated by the
Interior Minister, that he filtered the information and the
recordings were destroyed at the Interior Ministry without the
prosecutors who requested them having any idea," Petkov said.

/BTA/

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