The State Agency for National Security (SANS) could be shut down if it proves an organisation capable of generating only scandals and problems, Prime Minister Boiko Borissov told private Nova Televisia channel on October 26 2009.

"If SANS fails to do its job, and appears to be just a media project designed by previous prime minister Sergei Stanishev so that we can talk about him every day, I will either shut it down or restructure it thoroughly. The latter will take a lot of time which we don't have right now," Borissov said.

His words followed the most recent scandal involving SANS's work and former prime minister Sergei Stanishev who set up the agency to fight top-level corruption and organised crime.

On October 24 2009, Borissov called a special news conference to say that he had been handed a SANS report dating from 2008, when Stanishev was still in power, which reportedly contained classified information about alleged corrupt activities of top government employees.

According to Borissov, there were five copies of the report: one was sent to the Prime Minister, one to the speaker of Parliament, one to the President, one to the Prosecutor-General's Office and one was kept at SANS.

Of the four reports sent out by SANS, only the one sent to Stanishev was not returned to the agency. The Council of Ministers' records show that the report was received by Stanishev but from then on the trail goes cold.

This, according to Borissov, suggests that Stanishev used the data in the report for some other purpose, such as possibly warning the individuals cited in it about SANS' investigation.

The missing report surfaced when Alexei Petrov, a former top SANS employee, called Borissov and delivered the report to him. Borissov said he had asked Petrov where he got the report from but refused to tell the media Petrov's answer.

Borissov has asked the Prosecutor-General's Office to investigate the issue of the lost report and find out who was to blame: Stanishev or someone from the Council of Ministers' administration. Petrov would also be investigated as to how he got the report.

Stanishev also asked how Petrov acquired the report and said that no special political protection had been granted to anyone while he was prime minister.

On October 26 2009, Sofia prosecutor Nikolai Kokinov said that he remembered the report but that it did not provide sufficient grounds for launching investigations against the people in it.