site.bta Defence Minister Asks Prosecutor General Whether Classified Information Was Leaked through Wiretapping against Him

Defence Minister Asks Prosecutor General Whether Classified Information Was Leaked through Wiretapping against Him

Sofia, December 9 (BTA) - The Defence Ministry's press office has published an open letter by Defence Minister Nikolay Nenchev asking Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov whether he has been wiretapped, and if so, what happened to the information collected in this way.

In late November the prosecution service brought charges against Nenchev on two counts. He was accused that, by commissioning repairs of MiG-29 fighter jet engines to Poland, he ignored a five-year framework agreement with MiG Russian Aircraft Corporation (RSK MiG) on logistical maintenance of Bulgarian fighters. Nenchev was also charged with deliberately inducing Venislav Tsenov, head of the Defence Investment Directorate at the Defence Ministry, to refuse to sign a contract with the winner in a public procurement procedure for the supply of military uniforms.

In his open letter Nenchev asks the Prosecutor General a number of questions which he says are important to society and for the functioning of democracy.

First, he says, the indictment which charged him with "inciting" a subordinate to commit an offence expressly recognized the right of the accused to get acquainted with the case file, "including information obtained by special surveillance means." He asks whether SSMs have indeed been allowed and used during the pretrial proceedings against him in his capacity as Minister of Defence, and if so, who ordered their use, on what grounds and for what period of time. Nenchev also wants to know whether those who used the SSMs had a right of access to the respective level of classified information, including NATO information, which is subject to the highest level of classification.

He wonders where the information went, besides being reported to him every week by the Military Information Service and the Military Police, by the National Command Post of the Armed Forces and the competent authorities in the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Staff. He asks who guarantees that secrecy is protected, which in this case is important for national security and the security of NATO.

The Minister believes that such information is irrelevant to the charges he is facing, but could potentially become very dangerous if used for political persecution and national security breaches. He asks the Prosecutor General whether he or some other competent authority can guarantee to him and the public that no one will misuse this kind of data and facts and make them known to third parties.

Nenchev says that arbitrary eavesdropping on senior public officials was a practice during the totalitarian era which has been denounced by Bulgarian society, an era when the courts and the prosecutors were employed to carry out political repression. This is what makes the public so distrustful of these institutions, he notes.