Prime Minister Boiko Borissov has accepted the resignation of Petko Sertov, the head of the State Agency for National Security (SANS), the Government's press service said in a statement on August 3.

Having consulted with President Georgi Purvanov, Borissov accepted the resignation, thanking Sertov for his work at SANS, but said that he wanted to streamline the agency's work and "raise its authority", the statement said.

SANS was set up in January 2008 as the main state agency tasked with fighting organised crime and top-level corruption, subordinated directly to the Prime Minister. Initially dubbed "the Bulgarian FBI" by the media, its efficiency as the top investigative law enforcement agency has been often questioned by the opposition, but Sertov had the unwavering support of former prime minister Sergei Stanishev.

After Borissov's Cabinet took office on July 27, Sertov handed in his resignation just days later, although he still had three and a half years left of his five-year term.

Borissov nominated Tsvetlin Yovchev as Sertov's replacement, with the Cabinet scheduled to vote on the proposal on August 5. If the motion carries, the nomination will become official, but the appointment has to be made by Purvanov.

Yovchev (45) is a graduate of Bulgaria's Naval Academy in Varna and holds a degree in economics from the Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski. He joined the National Security Service (NSS), the agency that provided the organisational framework of SANS, in 1993, the Cabinet's statement said.

Yovchev rose to the rank of deputy director of NSS at the end of 2007 and became director of the counter-intelligence directorate of SANS at the agency's inception. He resigned from SANS in October 2008.