Having control over its crime fighting services is vital for a country’s wellbeing. This was what was missing in communist Bulgaria and it seems is still missing in democratic Bulgaria.

This is one of the unfortunate conclusions we can draw from the row surrounding the almighty State Agency for National Security (SANS).

The agency was created at Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev’s request to answer Bulgarians’ expectations about fighting organised crime and top-level corruption.

A year and a half later expectations are unchanged and what SANS has managed to achieve is to close a website that published anonymous yellow news about the sex life of the president and other politicians, to check the phone records of several MPs without a reason and arrest two public officials who allegedly took 2000 leva and 6000 leva, respectively, in bribes.

This was not what people had expected and certainly not what MPs wanted: an agency that could do whatever it wants to whoever it likes. In this case, however, MPs have themselves and no one else to blame. The law says that the agency’s head reports equally to the president, the speaker of Parliament and the prime minister. The head of SANS is appointed by the president on the request of the Council of Ministers, while parliamentary control is exercised by a special parliamentary committee. Today, however, the committee that is supposed to have civil control over SANS still does not exist because MPs cannot agree on who should chair it, which means that effectively no one controls SANS. So we have an agency that can do almost whatever it wants without anyone being able to question why and how.

This has made the agency a useful tool for anyone in power to pursue any kind of political measure, which was pretty much the attitude towards the special services under communism.

The term ‘state security’ has a special meaning in Bulgaria as in all post-communist states. For 45 years, Bulgaria’s ideological security was looked after by the now mythical former communist political police State Security. It operated in complete secrecy and in practice served the interest of those in power while nominally defending the country from its enemies.

That was why, when Stanishev came up with the idea of SANS, the media were a bit suspicious. With good reason.

“To fight top-level corruption and organised crime” was what Stanishev said SANS’ tasks were going to be and gave the agency the authority to do just that.

And in good communist tradition all that SANS is and does had to be in secret. No one knows how many people work for SANS and with what criteria they were selected. It is public knowledge that one applies to work at SANS, but waits to be invited which was how the former State Security used to operate.

It may simply be coincidence but if one takes out the second and the third words in SANS’ name what’s left is the phrase: State Security.