Since January 1 2008, Interior Minister Roumen Petkov has been “forced” to share some of his duties with Petko Sertov, head of the newly formed State Agency for National Security (SANS). From the moment the creation of SANS was announced by Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev last spring, Petkov has held a moderate position on it, claiming that some its jurisdictions were interfering with the Interior Ministry’s work. The result of months of “public discussion” between Petkov and Stanishev was seen on February 28 when Parliament adopted amendments to a number of laws and discussed the amendments of several others. SANS was given the power to exercise its duties but at the same time Petkov managed to preserve the status quo for his ministry by simply sharing some of its powers with SANS instead of loosing them all together.

The Foreigners Act was first on the agenda. MPs adopted just one change to the Foreigners Act, but it is an amendment that gives SANS the final word on every case involving a foreigner in Bulgaria.

Prior to February 28 Article 27a of the Foreigners Act said: “The authorities who register a foreigner in Bulgaria or the foreigner’s activity in Bulgaria, are obliged to check what type of visa the foreigner has and the grounds the on which the visa was issued. When a discrepancy between the registration application, the visa type and grounds on which the visa has been issued is found, the registration process is cancelled and information is sent to the services exercising administrative control over the foreigner in Bulgaria.” After MPs voted on February 28, the phrase “and to the State Agency for National Security” was added at the end of Article 27a.

In effect this means that SANS will receive all information about the stay of foreigners in Bulgaria, and their activity and behaviour as it will be the body that has the power to investigate all “discrepancies”. By keeping the words “services exercising administrative control over foreigner in Bulgaria” MPs preserved the Interior Ministry’s current duties because it is the Interior Ministry’s Migration Directorate that has this control.

The reasons for the amendment, which were signed by Stanishev, were that the amendments had to be adopted in a number of laws so that they did not contradict the State Agency for National Security Agency Act. In Bulgaria, these reasons are know as amendment motives and have to be signed by the person suggesting them.

According to the Act, SANS has the right to trace, eavesdrop, detain and search people and logically, since the February 28 amendments, this now includes all foreigners residing and working in Bulgaria.

Predictably it was not the amendments to the Foreigner’s Act that received much reaction from the opposition. On the same day, MPs adopted changes to the law on the use of special intelligence methods, which directly concerned Petkov and Sertov. When Stanishev announced the creation of SANS he described it as a super agency that would fight drug trafficking, money laundering and top-level corruption as well as exercising control over the length of stay of foreigners in the country with relation to terrorist threats. For that purpose the collection of intelligence using all necessary means was justified. The problem was that the Interior Ministry had always been the institution with those powers. Interior Minister was the only one who could decide on the use of special intelligence methods against a person, but only after the order had been approved by court. On February 28, MPs put the head of SANS Petko Sertov on the list of people who could ask the court to approve such a measure.

The more significant amendment was that MPs also provided for an “extreme situation” when both SANS or the Interior Minster can use special intelligence against a person for 24 hours without court approval. In reality this means that any situation qualified by Sertov or Petkov as “an extreme one” can lead to the use of special intelligence measures, such as gathering information from phone calls and e-mail records. No criteria was given about what cases qualified as “extreme”, which gives the two state bodies a green light for using special intelligence not only against Bulgarian citizens but against foreigners as well.

So, not only did Petkov preserved his power over the use of special intelligence but he got a 24 hour free period. As Yordan Bakalov from the right-wing coalition in opposition the United Democratic Forces told Parliament on February 28, Sertov has found himself in Petkov’s hands. As it was a newly formed body, SANS did not have the equipment necessary for conduction special intelligence gathering, Bakalov said, although it had the right to use the measures. Since the Interior Ministry was the only body that has such equipment Sertov, like it or not, would have to ask Petkov for “permission to use the ministry’s equipment even if Petkov was the person that SANS was investigating”, Bakalov said. In this way, Petkov will have not just the final word but “the final look” at everyone investigated by SANS.

However, Petkov was not victorious on all fronts. On February 28 the Parliament’s committee on internal security and public order accepted a proposal by Tsveta Markova, head of the State Commission on Information Security on how long the respective bodies were allowed to keep information obtained as a result of special intelligence measures. Both the ministry and SANS were able to keep phone calls records for six months. Markova proposed curbing that right. Gaps in legislation had allowed the ministry to keep information gathered using special intelligence measures, even if the use of these methods had been challenged successfully in court. Once a challenge had been upheld, the ministry was obliged to destroy all records. What usually happened was that the ministry graded the information as classified, which according to the Classified Information Act meant it could be kept for a number of years. Markova’s proposal was that information gathered in this way but then successfully challenged should be destroyed within 10 days.