On March 28 2008, lawmaker Tatyana Doncheva told Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev he had 48 hours to remove Interior Minister Roumen Petkov from his post if he wanted the Cabinet to survive the ongoing corruption row, Dnevnik daily reported.

Doncheva, a member of Parliament (MP) from the Socialist party chaired by Stanishev, was referring to the row that followed the revelations that Petkov had contacts with businessmen that were under investigation, something that Petkov admitted publicly on March 24 2008.

However, it was Doncheva herself who prevented the Parliament's committee on internal order and public security from sending a letter to Stanishev advising him to remove Petkov a day earlier.

On March 27 2008, ten committee members voted in favour of sending the letter, 10 were against and two abstained. Doncheva was one of the two MPs that abstained, with Petkov's predecessor as Interior Minister, Georgi Petkanov, being the other abstainee.

The letter could not lead to any legal consequences, but would have been a clear signal to Stanishev for Parliament's lack of support for Petkov. “If Stanishev does not remove Petkov, this avalanche will take the entire Government down with it,” Doncheva said in Parliament.

Petkov has refused to resign as a result of the scandal. He claimed his contacts with the businessmen under investigation were in the ministry's best interest.