site.btaNational Police Director Replaced

Sofia, June 8 (BTA) - The caretaker Interior Minister has
appointed a new National Police director, the Ministry said on
Tuesday. Stanimir Stanev comes to replace Nikolai Hadjiev who
will be reassigned. The reasons for Hadjiev's replacement remain
 unclear.

The announcement comes to confirm media reports about the
reshuffle earlier in the day. Only the name of the new National
Police director was missing from the reports: the Interior
Ministry told the Bulgarian National Television that he would be
 announced after he is presented to the Interior Ministry
personnel.

Stanev has been with the Interior Ministry since 1992. He has
held senior positions in the National Police and the police in
the southern cities of Plovdiv and Kurdjali.

This reshuffle comes in the heel of the replacement by the
caretaker government of the Border Police chief Svetlan
Kichakov, of Interior Ministry chief secretary Ivaylo Ivanov and
 the heads of the Directorate General for Combatting Organized
Crime, the Internal Security Department and the Interior
Ministry Inspectorate, as well as some local police chiefs.

National Security Service officers in specialized prosecution
office

In a separate development, the Interior Minister had to deny
reports in some media outlets, including the Bulgarian National
Television and bTV, that agents of the State Agency for National
 Security (SANS) Tuesday morning went into three key structures
for combatting crime: the Directorate General for Organized
Crime, the National Police and the specialized prosecution
service. According to the report, they seized classified
documents concerning pre-trial proceedings and investigations.
No official information about the operation was available from
SANS. 

Interior Minister Rashkov told Mediapool that SANS officers were
 in the specialized prosecution service doing "routine work" but
 the information about a SANS operation at the Directorate
General for Organized Crime and the National Police was false.
He said that "somebody is spreading false information to create
confusion" because "they want to cling onto power". 

On the sidelines of an international forum later in the day,
President Rumen Radev was asked to comment the rumours about a
SANS operation but he said he is not aware of what was
happening. "In a country with rule of law, there is no place for
 a war among the institutions and they must work in coordination
 against organized crime and corruption," he said. He also said,
 however, that the combat against corruption requires of the
judiciary and the prosecution service in particular, to act
before the news media and before the law-enforcing institutions
of foreign countries shed light on what is going on in Bulgaria.
  LN/