The military court of appeals ruled on March 28 to keep the deputy chief of Bulgaria's Chief Directorate for Combating Organised Crime (CDCOC), Ivan Ivanov, to remain in preventive arrest. Ivanov was arrested on March 17 on charges of malfeasance in office and leaking sensitive information.

Ivanov was detained by the Sofia military prosecutors a week after former counter-intelligence chief Atanas Atanassov, now an opposition member of Parliament, claimed he had recordings that showed a top police official reporting to businessmen about police investigations against their firms.

Atanassov then passed the information, which he claims to have received from an anonymous source, to Prosecutor General Boris Velchev. The investigation was then picked up by Bulgaria's newly-established State Agency for National Security (SANS). Atanassov's words were backed by former CDCOC chief Valyo Tanev, who quit the directorate last year, claiming that the main reason was the fact that senior officials in the Interior Ministry were covering up for organised crime.

Tanev is now a member of the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party of Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov, the former interior ministry secretary general, who quit in 2005 and is now one of the most outspoken critics of the Socialist-led cabinet and Interior Minister Roumen Petkov.