Two days after Bulgaria's BGNes news agency reported that former Bulgarian deputy foreign minister Feim Chaoushev had filed a lawsuit against an employee of the European Anti-fraud Office (Olaf), the latter released a statement on August 21 2008 that no such person was ever employed with Olaf.

On August 19, 2008 BGNes said that Chaoushev had filed a complaint against Gottfried Manfred, who he identified as Olaf's representative for Bulgaria. Chaoushev felt that he had suffered damages after Manfred mentioned his name in a July 2008 report on Bulgaria's deficient handling of European Union funds.

The report talked about “a criminal network made up of more than 50 Bulgarian, European and offshore companies, controlled and/or financed by [Bulgarian businessmen] Mario Nikolov and Lyudmil Stoykov, suspected of having close ties to the current Government”.

Chaoushev, who resigned from the post of deputy foreign minister earlier in the year, was mentioned as the person who had provided political support to Stoykov.

Chaoushev filed the complaint in a German court because this was where the report was written, he told BGNes. “I don't know yet how much money I will sue Olaf for,” he said and noted that he has never had any kind of business relations with Stoykov.

“What I did was to ask the German ambassador to Bulgaria to set up a meeting between Stoykov and Manfred, on Stoykov's request,” Chaoushev was quoted as saying. “I am a friend of Stoykov's and this was a favour because he wanted to help Olaf's investigation in Bulgaria. I would have done this for every other Bulgarian citizen."
 
From what Olaf said, however, Chaoushev would have problems finding who to demand damages from. “A person under that name [Gottfried Manfred] has never worked at Olaf,” the statement read.