Interior Minister Roumen Petkov verified what his political rivals have been claiming for months. He confirmed that he had a number of meetings and conversations with controversial businessmen under investigation by the ministry.

On March 24, Petkov told Bulgarian National Radio (BNR): “I’ve had phone calls and met people, whom I knew the ministry had used special intelligence methods against. I did so knowing I was talking to people whose calls had been tapped. I’m not embarrassed by the phone calls.”

Petkov described how the communication between him and the businessmen worked. “Usually they called me. The topics were vague enough and had nothing to do with the work of the ministry. They found my telephone number and they called me,” Petkov said. He said that if he had not answered the calls, these people may have asked themselves why he was not answering and this could have threatened the investigations into them. Other employees at the ministry had also had similar conversations, but the minister was certain no classified information had been leaked.

On March 25, speaking to journalists at the ministry building, Petkov made another interesting statement about his contact with people under investigation.

First, he reiterated the stance he had taken on the radio. Second, he said that during the meetings in question, he had at no point been alone with any of the individuals under investigation. He was always accompanied by an employee from the ministry. “I’m not in the habit of sitting down at a table with anybody,” Petkov said. “If anyone can prove that I have had unauthorised contact with people under investigation on my own, I would take my hat and leave”.

Petkov confirmed that other officials from the ministry had met controversial people. Asked whether Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev knew about his meetings, Petkov said: “It is no secret to anybody that other ministers have met such people before, but I don’t think they are to blame for that. Some popular businessmen have even been invited officially by former prime ministers to lunches. It is one thing to meet people through the work of the ministry, it’s another to have lunch with them.”

Petkov had something to say about his detractors, mainly Atanas Atanasov, Vanyo Tanov and Georgi Koritarov. Atanasov is an MP for the right-wing Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria and former head of the National Security Service, Tanov is a former head of the ministry’s chief directorate for combating organised crime and Koritarov is a leading Bulgarian journalist whose communist services’ dossier was revealed by Petkov two years ago. It said Koritarov was an agent for the communist secret police.

When asked by a journalist whether Petkov knew about the secret meeting between the three earlier in the day, Petkov said, “yes, an employee of mine reported to me earlier that they met in the lobby of the Crystal Palace hotel”. Petkov then showed reporters photos of Atanasov, Tanov and Koritarov having a conversation. “This is how slander is generated in Bulgaria,” Petkov said.

On his daily TV show, on commercial Nova Televisia, Koritarov did not deny meeting Atanasov and Tanov. He was led by his duty as a journalist, he said. Koritarov said the photos had been taken on Interior Ministry chief secretary Valentin Petrov’s mobile phone. Petrov had happened to be sitting at the next table in the lobby. Petkov said he was told about the meeting by his employees, who happened to be in the hotel “by accident”. Petrov, on the other hand, said he had arranged an interview in the lobby when he saw the three were having a meeting, but he denied taking the photographs.