Retired army general Nikola Kolev, the head of the cabinet of President Georgi Purvanov, has strongly criticised members of Parliament for raising a fuss about the State Agency for National Security (SANS) requesting phone records of MPs, whic he qualified as interference in the business of the services and their operatives.

"That is precisely why they are the secret service, so that no one can inquire about their operations. Regardless of who you are in this country, you are not allowed in the secret service's kitchen," Kolev told Nova Televizia on September 30.

He went on to say that MPs from the public order committee should not attempt to investigate SANS procedures, arguing that as politicians and public servants, they were supposed to be neutral. In the past, there has been a lot of interference from the committee with the operational procedures of the secret service, which was wrong and counterproductive, Kolev said.

Instead of establishing the rules for parliamentary control, MPs appeared more interested in finding out whether they themselves were being under investigation, Kolev said, as quoted by website mediapool.bg.

A successful campaign against corruption would be a long war, and Parliament was within the scope of SANS' investigations. What Parliament needed to do was to establish the rules that would allow SANS to systematically check individuals and institutions that access to state resources in order to ensure that those resources were not being misused, Kolev said.

Kolev's interview came a day after Purvanov also warned against interference with SANS' probes, albeit his statement was vaguer than Kolev's interview with Nova Televizia.