site.btaParliamentary Committee Receives Classified Information from Interior Ministry on Alleged Connection with Martin Bozhanov

Information has been requested from the Ministry of Interior whether Martin Bozhanov was a police collaborator, there is an answer in the secret registry, it is classified information, said Nikola Minchev, chairman of the ad hoc parliamentary committee probing the facts and circumstances related to the activities of the group around Martin Bozhanov, aka The Notary. Minchev added that the MPs could get acquainted with the information in the reply.

After the end of the committee meeting on Tuesday, when asked by a journalist whether, having familiarized himself with the letter from the Interior Ministry about Bozhanov, he would invite representatives of the Interior Ministry to a hearing, Minchev answered in the affirmative. "Maybe it will be in a closed session so we can look at the full information on this very topic, related to Martin Bozhanov's possible past as an agent," he added.

At Tuesday's meeting of the committee, it was announced that none of those invited for the hearing would be present. Minchev said that acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov, and former prosecutors general Sotir Tsatsarov and Ivan Geshev had declined the invitation.

Martin Bozhanov was shot dead in a gated complex in a Sofia suburb on the evening of January 31. According to media reports, he was a large-scale fixer of people's problems with the judiciary. He has been implicated in building a network of connections with prosecutors and judges whom he allegedly bribed, threatened, blackmailed or otherwise pressured to treat his "clients" favourably. In early February, Parliament set up an ad hoc committee to probe the facts and circumstances surrounding the activity of Bozhanov and his group.