Only a week into its term, Bulgaria’s new Government has already signalled its intention to revamp the way it fights organised crime – turning back time to restore the institutional framework that Prime Minister Boiko Borissov and Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov are familiar with.

In one of his first media statements after taking office, Tsvetanov said on July 30 that he planned to once again reinstate the Chief Directorate for Combating Organised Crime (CDCOC). The agency saw its powers severely curtailed after the State Agency for National Security (SANS) was set up in 2008 and became a mere department of the criminal police directorate at the Interior Ministry.

Institutional overlap

Since its very inception, SANS’ remit of investigating corruption and organised crime clashed with that of the Interior Ministry. The agency was championed by former prime minister Sergei Stanishev, who relentlessly presented it as the state’s way of fighting organised crime and top-level corruption, but to many in Bulgaria it was also a manifestation of the internal struggles within the Socialist party and Stanishev’s attempts to limit the influence of Roumen Petkov, then interior minister, since SANS was subordinated directly to the prime minister.

As most other measures meant to fight corruption and organised crime, SANS’ establishment was welcomed by the European Commission and Petkov was forced to relent. He resigned in April 2008 after a very public row caused by his meeting with controversial businessmen who were under investigation on suspicion of being part of an organised crime group.

More than a year-and-a-half after SANS was created, that overlap still remains, but not for long, if Tsvetanov gets his way. The new minister did not say what SANS’ new function would be, only that legal teams from the agency and the Interior Ministry would form an ad hoc group to settle the overlapping powers issue once and for all.

Two MPs from Borissov’s party GERB, however, were more outspoken on the topic. Anastas Anastassov, who was elected chairperson of Parliament’s internal security and public order committee, told Bulgarian National Television that he saw SANS’ future as an agency that analysed the intelligence data, but left any follow-up activity to the Interior Ministry.

Roumen Ivanov, the former head of the Dobrich regional police department, said much the same in an interview with Nova Televiziya. "SANS definitely needs reforming, because it has not lived up to high public expectations. Its profile needs clearing up and the agency must become mainly an information and analysis service," he said.
Given money, resources and legal power to intervene in almost any sphere of life to crack down on corruption and organised crime, SANS’ reputation was tarnished early on when it was involved in the crackdown on a website that published anonymous stories with allegations about the personal lives of various top politicians, including President Georgi Purvanov.

It later emerged that the agency had a far-reaching investigation of journalists, ostensibly meant to ferret out politicians who leaked information to the media.

New boss

Among the top SANS officials sacked in the wake of those revelations was the agency’s deputy head Ivan Drashkov, accused at the time of pushing the investigation behind the back of agency head Petko Sertov. The head of the counterintelligence unit

Tsvetlin Yovchev, described by the media as one of Drashkov’s close allies, resigned in October 2008, without making his reasons public.

Yovchev is now poised to make his comeback, as Sertov’s replacement no less.

Sertov submitted his resignation on July 31, duly accepted by Borissov on August 3. The Prime Minister plans to nominate Yovchev for the job, having already discussed the nomination with President Georgi Purvanov, who makes the official appointment of the SANS head.

Ivan Kostov, co-chairperson of the rightist Blue Coalition, who holds the rotating chair of the SANS control committee in Parliament, has already praised the nomination. A long-time critic of Sertov, who joined the counterintelligence service in 1984, Kostov has said that under the agency’s outgoing head, SANS was not trusted by its foreign partners.

Yovchev (45), only joined law enforcement in 1993 and, according to Dnevnik daily, was one of the counterintelligence officers to work on a report in 2000 that triggered a cabinet reshuffle by Kostov, then the country’s prime minister.

Yane Yanev from the Order, Law and Justice party was not so thrilled, saying that Yovchev’s appointment would be frowned upon by European Union officials because of Yovchev’s close association with Drashkov.