The State Agency for National Security (SANS) that was created in response to serious internal problems in the Interior Ministry is facing similar challenges.
This is one conclusion that could be drawn from the big scandal into which SANS has fallen in only a year and a half after its formation. The story broke on September 25 when Tatyana Doncheva, an MP from the ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party, said that SANS has gone through her phone records without reasonable grounds, which created a sense of paranoia in Bulgarian society. Online forums are now full of conspiracy theories about SANS tapping all phones in the country without restriction.
Her theory was supported by the fact that all three of Bulgaria’s mobile operators are obliged to give Interior Ministry access to phone records of anyone they want. The ministry, on the other hand, is obliged to give SANS access to those phone records. All that SANS has to do is to say that it needs them as part of an investigation. A loophole in the law means the agency is not obliged to say which particular investigation it is working on and why phone records are relevant.
This is what SANS did in Doncheva’s case, the same as in the case of her fellow party member Roumen Ovcharov, and Mincho Spassov, head of Parliament’s committee on internal order and public security. Spassov is an MP for the National Movement for Stability and Progress, a partner in the ruling coalition.
In fact, the frequent use of phone records without clear explanation was one of the reasons why the ministry was completely restructured earlier this year. The Interior Ministry Act was amended and the two services in charge of special operations were transformed. Now, however, it appears that little has changed, since the law allows SANS to asked the ministry for Doncheva’s phone records without having to say why.
To find out their reasons, Doncheva and Spassov, accompanied by other members of the committee, visited SANS headquarters on September 30.
But as they left, MPs differed on what they were told by Petko Sertov, head of SANS.
Surprisingly, Spassov, who is known for his position against any abuse of power by the special services, welcomed the agency’s decision to check his and Doncheva’s phone records. Spassov was checked for having contact with a person linked to foreign intelligence agents, while Doncheva’s phone records were part of SANS’ investigation into leaks of classified information. The latter related to opasnite.net, which was shut down by SANS this summer on the grounds that the anonymous information it published about several Government officials contained classified information. At that time, SANS said that Ognyan Stefanov, editor of Bulgarian-language news website frognews.bg was responsible for opansinte.net, which he denied. On September 22, he was brutally attacked in Sofia by four unidentified men and admitted to hospital in grave condition. In other words, SANS was looking into whether MPs had fed opasnite.net with information about those in power. And, as a harsh critic to the BSP’s policy, Doncheva was obviously on top of the list of suspects. That was why she did not share Spassov’s praise for SANS and said that she saw no legal grounds behind the agency’s actions although she did not deny having had contact with Stefanov.
Besides, she said, it was not clear who had ordered the investigation into her phone records.
“It seems that Sertov was not informed,” she was quoted as saying after the meeting. This raised questions about internal controls in SANS, and if any existed. To make things worse for SANS, opposition came in the form of Eliana Masseva MP from the right-wing United Democratic Forces coalition, who was quoted by Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily as saying that SANS had used the opasnite.net investigation as a reason to monitor various Bulgarian media.
