site.btaProsecutor General Denies Investigator's Allegations for GERB-MRF Deal for His Appointment

Prosecutor General Denies Investigator's Allegations for GERB-MRF Deal for His Appointment

Sofia, February 23 (BTA) - Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov Tuesday denied allegations by a Sofia investigator that he obtained his office in a deal between the ruling GERB and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF). "I did not take office after a corruption deal," he told the press after meeting with the investigators at the Sofia Investigative Service.

He also dismissed other allegations by investigator Boyko Atanassov, first in the website for investigative journalism, bivol.bg, and then in other media outlets, that Tsatsarov controlled a "special task unit" of investigators in Sofia, who work on secret cases against senior power-holders. He explained that these cases are activated when needed to influence the position of one of another decision-maker. He also alleged that the random case assignment rule is systematically violated to make sure the important cases go to the "right"m investigator. Prosecutors who refuse to obey the Prosecutor General's orders are punished with excessive workload and disciplinary procedures.

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) said Monday that its Ethics Commission opens a probe into Atanassov's allegations.

Tsatsarov said Tuesday that Atanassov's claims were not supported by any other investigator in the Sofia Investigative Service.

He also said that "nobody would ever imagine that the Prosecution Service and the investigative department would look like 'a special-task unit'".

The Prosecutor General said that he made a check following TV reports showing huge amounts of shredded documents, apparently pertaining to the investigation of the failure of Corpbank, dumped in waste containers near the Investigative Service HQs in Sofia.

According to Tsatsarov, the dumped documents shreds were working copies of documents and not a single piece of evidence has been destroyed. He described this as a case of "organizational negligence" because the head of the department which destroyed the papers had failed to create a clear organization for this procedure.

bTV was taken to the waste containers with the shredded documents by Boyko Atanassov, who implied that the somebody at the Sofia Investigative Service has been busy destroying important materials after he started talking to the news media.