site.btaInterior Ministry Designates 16 Police Officers to Work on European Public Prosecutor Office Cases

Sixteen police officers have been designated to work on European Public Prosecutor Office (EPPO) investigations, Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov said here Monday. During a news briefing at the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint on the Bulgarian-Turkish border, he specified that eight officers from his Ministry’s Economic Police Department and eight officers from the General Directorate National Police and the General Directorate Combating Organized Crime will be seconded to the EPPO.

"Since 2021, when our cooperation with EPPO began, we have been working together on just over 140 pre-trial proceedings, and the number of case files is much higher," the Minister said.

Answering a question about an EPPO investigation which the Bulgarian Interior Ministry allegedly thwarted, Stoyanov said that the case was investigated by the Ministry’s Internal Security Directorate, and the findings were immediately sent to the EPPO.

Details about the EUR 70 million case transpired in a Sega interview with European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kovesi last week during her visit to Bulgaria. She told the daily that Interior Ministry officers were instructed to search a building but they did not go into all offices and then did no work on the case for months on end.  

The announcement for the police officers’ appointment comes a couple of days after Kovesi visited Bulgaria to “finalize the effort to have a fully operational EPPO office in Bulgaria”, to use her words. Having dedicated police officers to work on the EPPO cases was mentioned by her as one of the things that had to be taken care of – along with ensuring the full number of delegated European prosecutors and a building for the EPPO office.